This I Believe Speech:
In another assignment for my Rhetoric and Civic Life Class, I was given the ostensibly easy assignment of writing (and submitting a speech) about a something that I believe in. Although simple enough, I actually had more trouble on this shorter, and less complex assignment than I did on the rhetorical analysis essay. I ultimately decided to write about how I love calm and quiet scenarios, hence the title of my paper/speech: I Believe in Tranquility. I took a different approach to this speech than those of my classmates. While their "This I Believe" speeches integrated concrete stories and anecdotes, mine was far more poetic and ambiguous. I thought that this would negatively inhibit my speech, but my professor reassured me that this was not the case. Ultimately, I thought this speech was good, but definitely had room for improvement. The positives of the speech were that, among other things, the speech had descriptive language and noticeable imagery that made it more engrossing to the audience. The most negative aspect of the speech was that it was not nearly as elaborate as it should be, and that my technique of purposely sounding ambiguous somewhat backfired, as it was hard for the audience to discern what my actual message was. My revisions tried to make the speech sound less ambiguous, but by doing this, I found that the lack of ambiguity made the essay sound flat, so I wound up changing almost nothing. Here is the audio for my speech:
http://personal.psu.edu/jar5583/Tranquility.mp3
