Jan. 18: "Toshi Rules!''

Well, I delivered my first speech this morning in my Introduction to Public Speaking class and my first thought was to write about that.
I thought it turned out well enough. The biggest obstacle was trying to cram my subject material into the mandated two minutes that each student was given. A guy near the front was designated the timekeeper and it was his job to hold up signs that said “One Minute Left’’ and “30 seconds left,’’ so that the speaker can pace himself.
When I saw the “30 seconds left’’ sign, I realized I had about a minute’s worth of material left. Up until that point, I was “killin it,’’ as they say. But I saw the “30 seconds’’ sign and lost my train of thought for a moment and then rushed through the end of my speech. The net result was that it was an OK speech.
But the real star of the day was my new friend Toshi, a Wildlife and Fisheries Major from Tokyo, Japan. Toshi’s speech was about fishing.
It wasn’t the subject matter that made me want to hug him, nor even his presentation.
It was his courage.
He opened his speech by apologizing for his English skills.
“I am still learning,’’ he explained. “I hope maybe that you understand. If not, I apologize.’’
Well, I could not have been more proud if it had been my own son up there.
Can you imagine what he must have been feeling as he stood there?
Try playing a little role reversal and imagine yourself standing in a Tokyo classroom, giving a speech in Japanese to an audience for whom Japanese is the native tongue.
That takes guts – and intelligence, too.
As a group, I was impressed with almost all of the speeches. For a bunch of 18-to-21-year-olds, I was amazed by their poise. Oh, there was some fidgeting, some stammering, a few awkward pauses. A couple of students just got up and read their speech, hardly bothering to look up and meet the gaze of their audience.
But for the most part, the kids displayed great stage presence.
My Tuesday evenings are going to be spent cramming for geography map quizzes, I realize. Each Wednesday, we have a map quiz on a geographical region.
Last week, you will recall, the first map quiz was on North America.
I was able to go online and find my score. I made a 95, which OK, but a little frustrating. I cannot imagine which question I could have missed. I had the material down cold.
I had all the right answers. One of the questions was wrong, obviously.
Even with the gaffe, I’m still in the top 10 percent of the class, but I should have had a perfect score.
In fact, I am determined to have a perfect score when I take the quiz on Central America, South America and the Caribbean tomorrow morning.
So I’ll say goodbye for now.
I need to make sure I don’t confuse the Atacama Desert for the Altiplano.
You know how embarrassing that is, right?