When it comes to rehearsal for a performance I have had quite a few experiences. I was a competitive and professional dancer for 13 years, having shows and competitions every weekend for years. I have spent many hours of my life practicing, learning, perfecting and performing pieces. I have the skills and abilities to understand what it takes to learn something and then perform it in front of an audience, while speaking is a little bit harder than performing those skills are still needed when it comes to either aspect. There had been many times in my years of competitive dance where we had to change our numbers right before going on stage and use our abilities to perform to ensure that we sold that performance. During my time as a professional dancer, we made tweaks to the shows and changed things between the manatees and evening shows. Being able to perform has been something I have had to become good at, and have an ability to understand exactly what to do when things are changed right before you need to start. While I have done many extracurricular performance, I have never had any academic performances. I never had to make a speech in front of a crowd, but I do know how to address large communities. I think through my experience in the dance world, I am able to separate my fears and perform in front of crowds.
In my life, I have used practice and rehearsal in relation to performance. I was an athlete and a dancer for most of my life. By showing up to dance rehearsals, I built connections with my teammates and practiced my dances for the competitions. By learning to work together and creating a synchronous routine, our performances were always successful. Practicing the dance over and over again got very repetitive. However, this was the only way we could be successful. Without all that practice, the dance would have looked sloppy and offbeat. I had very similar experiences with field hockey and lacrosse practice. By repeating our drills and passing in practice, I improved tremendously as an athlete. By repeating these drills and plays during practice, I engrained them in my head to use during the games. If I had never showed up to practice, I would not have learned the plays. This is why practice is so important. If one player is out of the loop and does not know the plays, everything is thrown off.
I have some experience with public speaking. I am not bad at it but there is room for improvement. In middle school we had a good amount of projects to present but it was usually in a group and not taken so seriously. In high school I had a good amount of solo projects to present where I learned to have confidence in myself and what I was saying. English was where we got graded on our presentation skills. Focusing on the importance of good public speaking and how it’s an important skill not just in school but everyday life. I work in the restaurant industry as a runner/server and guest stand, I use my communication, social, and public speaking skills daily. I feel comfortable speaking in small and large groups as defined in the course reader, since that is the only presentation I have done. I have danced all my life so I am also used to a large audience having eyes on me but that did not use words but emotions to convey my thoughts. My major, Athletic Training, requires me to be good at public speaking and as the reader says good public speakers are not born but created. Overall I think I have had a good introduction to public speaking and have had many opportunities to develop it over time but there is room for improvement.
The experiences I have had with public speaking are definitely different than most. I took a public speaking class in high school as an extra elective but ended up loving the class and teacher the most. We had different topics and sometimes we would pick them out of a hat and have to do it freely without preparation which helped me prepare for when we did longer speeches. However I do feel more comfortable talking in front of people as before that class my hands would shake, and I would stutter quite frequently. I ended up getting comfortable with the people in my class and as a senior would always volunteer to go first and get it over with as the speeches were fresh in my mind and had a clear context with its purpose. I also attended a leadership conference for sports, where we met tons of leaders as they all speak in front of a large crowd and they all kind of got at the same point of that, no one is born with the natural ability to speak for long. You have to learn as you go, having the ability to feel wanted and welcome in a scene where you look out and there are so many people is a hard skill to learn.
I would say that I have a good bit of experience with public speaking in performance. I’ve taken an acting class here at UNE and a few public speaking classes in high school. I have also taken a couple of Jesse’s classes before which usually require some extent of public speaking. I am by no means a pro though (obviously) and I still have a lot of skills to learn. Literally in a speech I gave last semester I choked and ended up not saying a couple sentences of what I had planned too. However that’s all part of the process I guess, good presentations and bad ones. Same thing with that acting class I took, in the day to day regular classes I was fine doing the things in front of the class, however on the day of our final performance I was nervous and my final was a little messy. Public speaking is just one of those things that doesnt bother me too much unless I really start to think about it, kike most things I guess. If I let the nerves get to my head then that’s exactly what they’re going to do. I enjoyed the class I took in high school, I actually took it twice so I hope this class is similar to that one in a sense.
Sydney Pickering
Public speaking 100A
Journal 2
1/26/23
Personally, performance isn’t just about public speaking, it can be a task with as big or as small as an audience necessary. In my life, one might say I’ve been performing since the age of five. As a girl who grew up in a school district with less than three hundred kids from k-12, everyone was involved in everything. Sports was the first performance of my life, knowing that practice makes perfect even though nothing can ever be perfect. Being able to see growth from when I was 5-18 years old and knowing that if I practiced well then I’d perform better. For specific sports, I’d have a ritual something that I did before every contest. Alpine racing was the biggest one yet, before starting I would run through the course based on memory with my hands acting like my feet. This helped me memorize the patterns and different pitches of the race course. Musically speaking our k-5 school members have a giant concert every year. Each year the theme would be announced and grades picked the songs that they wanted to sing and started practicing with costume and dance several months prior to the performance so that on the night of the big show, everything ran seamlessly. By the end of my high school education, I was named class salutatorian and was assigned a speech to give at the graduation ceremony. I worked with my English teacher and practiced for weeks, and successfully gave my speech to the town.
Although I have not had many professional experiences with practice and rehearsal of public speaking, I did encounter a role in high school that involved a bit of leadership that contained public speaking. When I was a senior in high school, I ran the Best Buddies program which involved student engagement with young children with disabilities. I was the leader of this club which involved me talking in front of various students, faculty, and parents. Every Saturday, my high school ran a program where children containing disabilities could come in the morning and play with games, puzzles, sports balls, etc… When all the children and parents arrived, I had to welcome them in and describe the directions of the games to play that day. I also had to communicate to my fellow classmates their duties in order to assist the young children the best way possible to make the days run smoothly. This role took a lot of preparation as I was dealing with many different groups of people. I had to have meetings with faculty staff and students once a week to plan agendas for the special needs kids coming on the weekends. I really had to manage my time as I also had schoolwork to do during the week. I enjoyed this role very much at school, and I think it gave me a little taste of how public speaking could look like in the real world.
As a soon-to-be field artillery officer in the U.S. Army, the training I have endured over the past few years revolves around the importance of repetition and rehearsal. The circumstances under which we must perform are riddled with varying degrees and factors from situation to situation. The only constant is the general structure of operations; receive a mission, plan the mission, complete the mission. A successful mission relies on the plan and the execution. Both are rehearsed over and over again. I spent the most of my junior years rehearsing the doctrinal way to conduct different tasks, such as crossing a linear danger area or conducting an ambush. This consisted of drawing out the different steps, teaching it to others, participating in the execution, then leading these tasks myself. As I take on more leadership roles, rehearsals are more geared towards learning how to write operations orders, being able to write them with a template, then being able to write them with time constraints.
I have seen direct results caused by the methods I have taken to increase my performance and leadership abilities. The first operation I was the platoon leader for I nearly broke down in tears because I felt like a failure. I knew my tactics and I knew what I had to do, I simply lacked the experience. Less than six months later, I went into a month-long field problem. I was able to perform in any position I was put in (platoon leader, platoon sergeant, squad leader), with little to no sleep, limited food, and Soldiers I had never met. I believe that repetition and significant emotional events are the only way in which we learn.
Honesty time! I have never had to prepare too much for any assignment that I have completed in my schooling career. This is not to say that I do not understand the importance of preparation and rehearsal, because I very much do. In a sense, I guess, challenge has been absent from a number of the projects, tests, and assignments that I have completed for my years in school. I do challenge myself in these cases, when the challenge itself is not there, but I do so in a way that is easy for myself. I could over-achieve and prepare perfectly for everything that I do in school, but that would take away a part of my relentless character trait of rebelling against any system that tries to govern me!
My work in the past has usually spoken for itself, at least in a general sense. There is always room for improvement when you are an academic and even more so for just being an individual. The only sensible way to live life is to grow through it, challenges and relaxation periods, everything. Even though this class is the lowest level I have taken in a little while, I will use what I can from it to improve my oration skills and anything else that I might pick up will also be used.
When it comes to performance, practice makes perfect. I have lots of experience with practice and rehearsal, specifically in dancing. I have been dancing for 15 and a half years, and that means many hours of practice and rehearsal to prepare for performances. We have normal practice every week starting in the fall all the way to our final performance in the summer. We even hold extra rehearsals as the end of the season gets closer. We always do one final dress rehearsal the day before our big performance at the end of the season.
Our competition teams start practice in the summer with a five-week session, this helps us to get more practice to perfect our routines by competition season in the spring. When competition season gets closer, we have extra rehearsals as big groups and with our costumes to make sure everything looks perfect. As a competitive dancer your dance routine needs to be perfect for competitions. We get judged at every competition by professional dancers and dance instructors and are put against other studios. At a competition, we are competing to see who the best dance studio is. You know all the practice and extra rehearsals paid off when you come out on top.
My confidence in oral presentations and speech has always made me one to bite at the bait of a debate or a chance to speak to my peers. Due to my eagerness to talk I am all too familiar with the butterflies and doubt of preparation. In eighth grade I entered my school’s climate change and science debate, freshmen year I ran for class president, junior year I ran for vice president of the National Honors Society, and senior year I ran for the U.S. president in a mock election. Each event gave me an opportunity to learn from where I failed and by senior year I became the United States first (mock) female president. Preparation was the bulk of my work and no matter how many times I stood before my brother, or my mom, or dad to give them a practice speech, the real thing gave me that sick heavy feeling in my stomach.
Even in during my time with participating in school sports or athletic events, preparation was key, yet I was always afflicted by the same issue. I practice six to five days out of the seven days of the week, forcing all my movements to become muscle memory. But without fail, by the time meet day rolls around I am sick to my stomach, there has been times when I even hyperventilate. I consider myself a confident lady, but these nerves are something I have never been able to evade.
JOURNAL # 2: Help me understand what experiences you have with practice or rehearsal and the relationship that preparation has to performance—academically, professionally, etc.
I have had many experiences with performance. I have always played three sports my entire life, basketball, baseball, and soccer. All three sports need the right amount of preparation and practice in order to be successful during the performance. I’m actually on the Men’s soccer team here at UNE and the Club Baseball team! Other than sports, I’ve been a part of theater since the 7th grade. The theater is very similar to sports, you have to prepare in order for a positive result with the performance. I’ve always been into doing things, and just keeping busy, playing three sports, and doing theater definitely did that for me. It also gave me a great understanding of how much effort it takes to put on a show. It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of work and preparation if you want to achieve your end goal, whatever that may be. Looking professionally, I’ve worked with the Portland Sea Dogs for a short period of time, and I got the feeling of what it takes to put on a game. It’s hard to believe just how much goes into making a gameday successful. There are so many things that happen behind the scenes that aren’t appreciated but are so vital to achieving the end goal. What I’ve learned through my experiences is that it’s all so important to properly prepare yourself, and put in the time and effort if you want good results, and that can go for a lot of things.
I have had experience with practice my entire life. I have continuously played sports year round, so I usually had practices or games almost every day/weekend. The point of practice is to get better and get prepared for a game. Without practice, no one would succeed in really anything at all. So I have a really close relationship with practice. Being that I have always been an athlete, I could not have gotten better or got to the college level without practice and hard work. For example, for games we usually practice the day before focusing on what we believe the other team will be running for offense and defense. This practice prepares us for the game and gets us ready to perform well against our opponent. If we went into the games blind, then we would have no idea what we were doing and we would struggle and probably lose. With being prepared, we perform well and end up executing what we practiced, and that leads to wins.
I’m honestly not fully sure what to say for this journal reflection. Personally, I see a high value on experience, but I also try to be fairly realistic. Something that has always resonated with me and stuck in my head was the saying “Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.”.(Something one of my middle school science teachers use to yell at us while giving us 10 page, top-to-bottom, notes, or when we were late/tardy.) Its certainly important to develop your skills, but a lot of developing a skill is creating the muscle memory for it, ingraining it in your brain till its second nature. So I try to practice and condition myself as much as possible, but in the most constructive way possible. (Which a lot of times is completely unknown to me…Ironically.)
All of that being said, I personally don’t have any excess rehearsal or practice experience outside an academic setting. And in all honesty that form of practice for me wasn’t necessarily a complicated or dedicated feat by any means. Its not much practice for me, s I genuinely am fascinated by all the different complications and possibilities of life. I don’t pursue an education out of need or any perceived social/cultural requirements. But out of a purely intrinsic desire to learn as much as possible. So it typically doesn’t feel like “practice” to me when I am studying unless it’s the rare subject I just have no interest in. And beyond academically, I do also love crafts, I know 3 languages (fluent in one), and I play the violin. So I am a bit familiar with the correlation between skill development and successful application of those skills.
A practice that I had to learn and rehearse all the time was my job. It took me about a week to get to understand the routine of how the kids worked and what was expected of me to work with them. It taught me how to be patient with the kids when they had a speech issue or just a hard time asking for help. Plus understanding all the kids’ backgrounds, how they work, and their names. I’ve worked with the kids for about a solid year now and I have gained a trust and a place of safety when they come to see me or talk to me.
Some things that I have had to practice throughout life is sports. I grew up my whole life playing sports and when I got to high schools I took them pretty seriously. I ran cross country, played hockey and lacrosse. I spent hours a week practicing, watching film and high lights and lifting weights in the gym. The constant repatition made me a better every drill or list would hel a little bit and it would all add up. Coming into highschool I was a very small kid and with going to the gym it really helped me get to the level I wanted to be. Another thing I had to practice a lot as a kid was reading. When beginning to read I struggled more than other kids, so my mom would make me practice more often then my other friends. She would always help me when I began reading and be there for me when i would struggle and reminded me with practice I would eventually master this task of being able to fluently read. Also even practice a presentation that I have to present in class, I happened most presentations I do. I try to practice them atleast once or twice beofre giving the presentation to the class to ensure that it is good and I will get a good grade on the presentation.
I never practiced public speaking. In fact , I always told myself to fake it until you make it. At a young age I was given a lot of responsibility. I was working at the age of 14 and all of my employers seemed to display a lot of trust in me. There was something about faking the funk that always landed me a lot of respect from others. I always thought this was because of my demeanor. I never questioned myself even if I thought I could be wrong. I talked with purpose and tried to look like I was in control as much possible even if that was never the case. I remember doing slideshows in highschool and walking up there with so much confidence then just getting to my title slide thinking… “oh no”. Although I was thinking this in my head I tried to pretend that it wasn’t a big deal and that I wasn’t nervous at all. For half of the class they truly thought I had no stage fright but for the other half, they were definitely calling my bluff. My hope is to limit that fear and have true confidence when speaking to a crowd, because who knows maybe one day I’ll deliver a huge speech. Whether i’m hosting a TED talk or im in front of my relatives asking if ill ever get married.
Since ive started school ive always had a lot of experience with public speaking. It was something that a;; of my schools required as a class every student had to take from oral presentations in 1-4th grade to middle school lectures to my public speaking class that made me stand in front of about 4000 people and talk about only myself. Ive always had good experiences, I’ve had blunders and mistakes but to me those are what make me better. Ive learned through sports that only the hard things you do in life are making you better. You dont get better by doing all the easy tasks everyday. Life gives you challenges and you have to adapt and overcome those challenges because if you don’t then all your doing is prolonging being average and mediocre. Ive had to preform in all aspects of my life including the sports I play here at UNE I am the Quaterback of the football team and I always say the game I play is different from everyone else’s. I have to use my brain more then I have to physically beat someone I can’t just throw my body around and make plays. I have checklists I have for each and everyone of our 150 + football plays. Each having a different set up on where to look who to give the ball to and when or when not to throw the ball then after I finish my mental checklist I have up to eight 300 pound men run-in g at me as I try to stand there calmly and deliver a ball to a person while staying completely still and clam trusting those around me to do their job so I can do mine. But like life sometimes I get rocked from someone I don’t see coming, and other times I make a great play. Like life, sometimes you get rocked and other times you do amazing but its all about how you respond after a great play or a bad one. You. Use cycle through the moment you had by reflecting, giving yourself props or fixing it and then moving on cause there is more coming.
I have been fortunate enough to have given many speeches. I have spoken in front of many different audiences, from many different backgrounds as well as a variety in audience size. I also try to seek out these opportunities as I believe we can always become better at communication. I think practice with being out of your comfort zone and speaking in front of larger groups as well as people of very different ideologies and beliefs, is key to success in life. Being able to communicate with anybody is a skill that I think is extremely important skill that directly correlates to all fashions of life, from work, to school, to meeting new people and creating new connections.
My experience with practice/rehearsal for a performance was reciting my words, until I can memorize my thoughts almost completely and to test out how I want to word and say things. I would also have my family sit down and I would rehearse on them and ask for feedback. Try again in the mirror with the feedback and look at how I am standing, my eye contact and how much fidgeting I am doing. I dislike performing but I also like it since it helps me get better and get over the fear of public speaking.
Since I have done theater for a while, I have had to endure many different rehearsals (music, dancing, acting, etc.). These rehearsals each focused on different aspects of performing and offered new information regarding our final performances. I would say that rehearsal is a crucial aspect of getting to a performance, without rehearsing, there would be no way to perform the material. I also wrote a speech for my high school graduation and spoke in front of my peers, families, friends, and teachers. Practicing my speech many times before delivering it aided in my confidence as well as the actual performance of the speech. So, I believe that practice and performing go hand in hand, without one you cannot have the other.
21 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 2”
When it comes to rehearsal for a performance I have had quite a few experiences. I was a competitive and professional dancer for 13 years, having shows and competitions every weekend for years. I have spent many hours of my life practicing, learning, perfecting and performing pieces. I have the skills and abilities to understand what it takes to learn something and then perform it in front of an audience, while speaking is a little bit harder than performing those skills are still needed when it comes to either aspect. There had been many times in my years of competitive dance where we had to change our numbers right before going on stage and use our abilities to perform to ensure that we sold that performance. During my time as a professional dancer, we made tweaks to the shows and changed things between the manatees and evening shows. Being able to perform has been something I have had to become good at, and have an ability to understand exactly what to do when things are changed right before you need to start. While I have done many extracurricular performance, I have never had any academic performances. I never had to make a speech in front of a crowd, but I do know how to address large communities. I think through my experience in the dance world, I am able to separate my fears and perform in front of crowds.
In my life, I have used practice and rehearsal in relation to performance. I was an athlete and a dancer for most of my life. By showing up to dance rehearsals, I built connections with my teammates and practiced my dances for the competitions. By learning to work together and creating a synchronous routine, our performances were always successful. Practicing the dance over and over again got very repetitive. However, this was the only way we could be successful. Without all that practice, the dance would have looked sloppy and offbeat. I had very similar experiences with field hockey and lacrosse practice. By repeating our drills and passing in practice, I improved tremendously as an athlete. By repeating these drills and plays during practice, I engrained them in my head to use during the games. If I had never showed up to practice, I would not have learned the plays. This is why practice is so important. If one player is out of the loop and does not know the plays, everything is thrown off.
I have some experience with public speaking. I am not bad at it but there is room for improvement. In middle school we had a good amount of projects to present but it was usually in a group and not taken so seriously. In high school I had a good amount of solo projects to present where I learned to have confidence in myself and what I was saying. English was where we got graded on our presentation skills. Focusing on the importance of good public speaking and how it’s an important skill not just in school but everyday life. I work in the restaurant industry as a runner/server and guest stand, I use my communication, social, and public speaking skills daily. I feel comfortable speaking in small and large groups as defined in the course reader, since that is the only presentation I have done. I have danced all my life so I am also used to a large audience having eyes on me but that did not use words but emotions to convey my thoughts. My major, Athletic Training, requires me to be good at public speaking and as the reader says good public speakers are not born but created. Overall I think I have had a good introduction to public speaking and have had many opportunities to develop it over time but there is room for improvement.
The experiences I have had with public speaking are definitely different than most. I took a public speaking class in high school as an extra elective but ended up loving the class and teacher the most. We had different topics and sometimes we would pick them out of a hat and have to do it freely without preparation which helped me prepare for when we did longer speeches. However I do feel more comfortable talking in front of people as before that class my hands would shake, and I would stutter quite frequently. I ended up getting comfortable with the people in my class and as a senior would always volunteer to go first and get it over with as the speeches were fresh in my mind and had a clear context with its purpose. I also attended a leadership conference for sports, where we met tons of leaders as they all speak in front of a large crowd and they all kind of got at the same point of that, no one is born with the natural ability to speak for long. You have to learn as you go, having the ability to feel wanted and welcome in a scene where you look out and there are so many people is a hard skill to learn.
I would say that I have a good bit of experience with public speaking in performance. I’ve taken an acting class here at UNE and a few public speaking classes in high school. I have also taken a couple of Jesse’s classes before which usually require some extent of public speaking. I am by no means a pro though (obviously) and I still have a lot of skills to learn. Literally in a speech I gave last semester I choked and ended up not saying a couple sentences of what I had planned too. However that’s all part of the process I guess, good presentations and bad ones. Same thing with that acting class I took, in the day to day regular classes I was fine doing the things in front of the class, however on the day of our final performance I was nervous and my final was a little messy. Public speaking is just one of those things that doesnt bother me too much unless I really start to think about it, kike most things I guess. If I let the nerves get to my head then that’s exactly what they’re going to do. I enjoyed the class I took in high school, I actually took it twice so I hope this class is similar to that one in a sense.
Sydney Pickering
Public speaking 100A
Journal 2
1/26/23
Personally, performance isn’t just about public speaking, it can be a task with as big or as small as an audience necessary. In my life, one might say I’ve been performing since the age of five. As a girl who grew up in a school district with less than three hundred kids from k-12, everyone was involved in everything. Sports was the first performance of my life, knowing that practice makes perfect even though nothing can ever be perfect. Being able to see growth from when I was 5-18 years old and knowing that if I practiced well then I’d perform better. For specific sports, I’d have a ritual something that I did before every contest. Alpine racing was the biggest one yet, before starting I would run through the course based on memory with my hands acting like my feet. This helped me memorize the patterns and different pitches of the race course. Musically speaking our k-5 school members have a giant concert every year. Each year the theme would be announced and grades picked the songs that they wanted to sing and started practicing with costume and dance several months prior to the performance so that on the night of the big show, everything ran seamlessly. By the end of my high school education, I was named class salutatorian and was assigned a speech to give at the graduation ceremony. I worked with my English teacher and practiced for weeks, and successfully gave my speech to the town.
Although I have not had many professional experiences with practice and rehearsal of public speaking, I did encounter a role in high school that involved a bit of leadership that contained public speaking. When I was a senior in high school, I ran the Best Buddies program which involved student engagement with young children with disabilities. I was the leader of this club which involved me talking in front of various students, faculty, and parents. Every Saturday, my high school ran a program where children containing disabilities could come in the morning and play with games, puzzles, sports balls, etc… When all the children and parents arrived, I had to welcome them in and describe the directions of the games to play that day. I also had to communicate to my fellow classmates their duties in order to assist the young children the best way possible to make the days run smoothly. This role took a lot of preparation as I was dealing with many different groups of people. I had to have meetings with faculty staff and students once a week to plan agendas for the special needs kids coming on the weekends. I really had to manage my time as I also had schoolwork to do during the week. I enjoyed this role very much at school, and I think it gave me a little taste of how public speaking could look like in the real world.
As a soon-to-be field artillery officer in the U.S. Army, the training I have endured over the past few years revolves around the importance of repetition and rehearsal. The circumstances under which we must perform are riddled with varying degrees and factors from situation to situation. The only constant is the general structure of operations; receive a mission, plan the mission, complete the mission. A successful mission relies on the plan and the execution. Both are rehearsed over and over again. I spent the most of my junior years rehearsing the doctrinal way to conduct different tasks, such as crossing a linear danger area or conducting an ambush. This consisted of drawing out the different steps, teaching it to others, participating in the execution, then leading these tasks myself. As I take on more leadership roles, rehearsals are more geared towards learning how to write operations orders, being able to write them with a template, then being able to write them with time constraints.
I have seen direct results caused by the methods I have taken to increase my performance and leadership abilities. The first operation I was the platoon leader for I nearly broke down in tears because I felt like a failure. I knew my tactics and I knew what I had to do, I simply lacked the experience. Less than six months later, I went into a month-long field problem. I was able to perform in any position I was put in (platoon leader, platoon sergeant, squad leader), with little to no sleep, limited food, and Soldiers I had never met. I believe that repetition and significant emotional events are the only way in which we learn.
Honesty time! I have never had to prepare too much for any assignment that I have completed in my schooling career. This is not to say that I do not understand the importance of preparation and rehearsal, because I very much do. In a sense, I guess, challenge has been absent from a number of the projects, tests, and assignments that I have completed for my years in school. I do challenge myself in these cases, when the challenge itself is not there, but I do so in a way that is easy for myself. I could over-achieve and prepare perfectly for everything that I do in school, but that would take away a part of my relentless character trait of rebelling against any system that tries to govern me!
My work in the past has usually spoken for itself, at least in a general sense. There is always room for improvement when you are an academic and even more so for just being an individual. The only sensible way to live life is to grow through it, challenges and relaxation periods, everything. Even though this class is the lowest level I have taken in a little while, I will use what I can from it to improve my oration skills and anything else that I might pick up will also be used.
When it comes to performance, practice makes perfect. I have lots of experience with practice and rehearsal, specifically in dancing. I have been dancing for 15 and a half years, and that means many hours of practice and rehearsal to prepare for performances. We have normal practice every week starting in the fall all the way to our final performance in the summer. We even hold extra rehearsals as the end of the season gets closer. We always do one final dress rehearsal the day before our big performance at the end of the season.
Our competition teams start practice in the summer with a five-week session, this helps us to get more practice to perfect our routines by competition season in the spring. When competition season gets closer, we have extra rehearsals as big groups and with our costumes to make sure everything looks perfect. As a competitive dancer your dance routine needs to be perfect for competitions. We get judged at every competition by professional dancers and dance instructors and are put against other studios. At a competition, we are competing to see who the best dance studio is. You know all the practice and extra rehearsals paid off when you come out on top.
My confidence in oral presentations and speech has always made me one to bite at the bait of a debate or a chance to speak to my peers. Due to my eagerness to talk I am all too familiar with the butterflies and doubt of preparation. In eighth grade I entered my school’s climate change and science debate, freshmen year I ran for class president, junior year I ran for vice president of the National Honors Society, and senior year I ran for the U.S. president in a mock election. Each event gave me an opportunity to learn from where I failed and by senior year I became the United States first (mock) female president. Preparation was the bulk of my work and no matter how many times I stood before my brother, or my mom, or dad to give them a practice speech, the real thing gave me that sick heavy feeling in my stomach.
Even in during my time with participating in school sports or athletic events, preparation was key, yet I was always afflicted by the same issue. I practice six to five days out of the seven days of the week, forcing all my movements to become muscle memory. But without fail, by the time meet day rolls around I am sick to my stomach, there has been times when I even hyperventilate. I consider myself a confident lady, but these nerves are something I have never been able to evade.
JOURNAL # 2: Help me understand what experiences you have with practice or rehearsal and the relationship that preparation has to performance—academically, professionally, etc.
I have had many experiences with performance. I have always played three sports my entire life, basketball, baseball, and soccer. All three sports need the right amount of preparation and practice in order to be successful during the performance. I’m actually on the Men’s soccer team here at UNE and the Club Baseball team! Other than sports, I’ve been a part of theater since the 7th grade. The theater is very similar to sports, you have to prepare in order for a positive result with the performance. I’ve always been into doing things, and just keeping busy, playing three sports, and doing theater definitely did that for me. It also gave me a great understanding of how much effort it takes to put on a show. It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of work and preparation if you want to achieve your end goal, whatever that may be. Looking professionally, I’ve worked with the Portland Sea Dogs for a short period of time, and I got the feeling of what it takes to put on a game. It’s hard to believe just how much goes into making a gameday successful. There are so many things that happen behind the scenes that aren’t appreciated but are so vital to achieving the end goal. What I’ve learned through my experiences is that it’s all so important to properly prepare yourself, and put in the time and effort if you want good results, and that can go for a lot of things.
I have had experience with practice my entire life. I have continuously played sports year round, so I usually had practices or games almost every day/weekend. The point of practice is to get better and get prepared for a game. Without practice, no one would succeed in really anything at all. So I have a really close relationship with practice. Being that I have always been an athlete, I could not have gotten better or got to the college level without practice and hard work. For example, for games we usually practice the day before focusing on what we believe the other team will be running for offense and defense. This practice prepares us for the game and gets us ready to perform well against our opponent. If we went into the games blind, then we would have no idea what we were doing and we would struggle and probably lose. With being prepared, we perform well and end up executing what we practiced, and that leads to wins.
I’m honestly not fully sure what to say for this journal reflection. Personally, I see a high value on experience, but I also try to be fairly realistic. Something that has always resonated with me and stuck in my head was the saying “Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.”.(Something one of my middle school science teachers use to yell at us while giving us 10 page, top-to-bottom, notes, or when we were late/tardy.) Its certainly important to develop your skills, but a lot of developing a skill is creating the muscle memory for it, ingraining it in your brain till its second nature. So I try to practice and condition myself as much as possible, but in the most constructive way possible. (Which a lot of times is completely unknown to me…Ironically.)
All of that being said, I personally don’t have any excess rehearsal or practice experience outside an academic setting. And in all honesty that form of practice for me wasn’t necessarily a complicated or dedicated feat by any means. Its not much practice for me, s I genuinely am fascinated by all the different complications and possibilities of life. I don’t pursue an education out of need or any perceived social/cultural requirements. But out of a purely intrinsic desire to learn as much as possible. So it typically doesn’t feel like “practice” to me when I am studying unless it’s the rare subject I just have no interest in. And beyond academically, I do also love crafts, I know 3 languages (fluent in one), and I play the violin. So I am a bit familiar with the correlation between skill development and successful application of those skills.
A practice that I had to learn and rehearse all the time was my job. It took me about a week to get to understand the routine of how the kids worked and what was expected of me to work with them. It taught me how to be patient with the kids when they had a speech issue or just a hard time asking for help. Plus understanding all the kids’ backgrounds, how they work, and their names. I’ve worked with the kids for about a solid year now and I have gained a trust and a place of safety when they come to see me or talk to me.
Some things that I have had to practice throughout life is sports. I grew up my whole life playing sports and when I got to high schools I took them pretty seriously. I ran cross country, played hockey and lacrosse. I spent hours a week practicing, watching film and high lights and lifting weights in the gym. The constant repatition made me a better every drill or list would hel a little bit and it would all add up. Coming into highschool I was a very small kid and with going to the gym it really helped me get to the level I wanted to be. Another thing I had to practice a lot as a kid was reading. When beginning to read I struggled more than other kids, so my mom would make me practice more often then my other friends. She would always help me when I began reading and be there for me when i would struggle and reminded me with practice I would eventually master this task of being able to fluently read. Also even practice a presentation that I have to present in class, I happened most presentations I do. I try to practice them atleast once or twice beofre giving the presentation to the class to ensure that it is good and I will get a good grade on the presentation.
I never practiced public speaking. In fact , I always told myself to fake it until you make it. At a young age I was given a lot of responsibility. I was working at the age of 14 and all of my employers seemed to display a lot of trust in me. There was something about faking the funk that always landed me a lot of respect from others. I always thought this was because of my demeanor. I never questioned myself even if I thought I could be wrong. I talked with purpose and tried to look like I was in control as much possible even if that was never the case. I remember doing slideshows in highschool and walking up there with so much confidence then just getting to my title slide thinking… “oh no”. Although I was thinking this in my head I tried to pretend that it wasn’t a big deal and that I wasn’t nervous at all. For half of the class they truly thought I had no stage fright but for the other half, they were definitely calling my bluff. My hope is to limit that fear and have true confidence when speaking to a crowd, because who knows maybe one day I’ll deliver a huge speech. Whether i’m hosting a TED talk or im in front of my relatives asking if ill ever get married.
Since ive started school ive always had a lot of experience with public speaking. It was something that a;; of my schools required as a class every student had to take from oral presentations in 1-4th grade to middle school lectures to my public speaking class that made me stand in front of about 4000 people and talk about only myself. Ive always had good experiences, I’ve had blunders and mistakes but to me those are what make me better. Ive learned through sports that only the hard things you do in life are making you better. You dont get better by doing all the easy tasks everyday. Life gives you challenges and you have to adapt and overcome those challenges because if you don’t then all your doing is prolonging being average and mediocre. Ive had to preform in all aspects of my life including the sports I play here at UNE I am the Quaterback of the football team and I always say the game I play is different from everyone else’s. I have to use my brain more then I have to physically beat someone I can’t just throw my body around and make plays. I have checklists I have for each and everyone of our 150 + football plays. Each having a different set up on where to look who to give the ball to and when or when not to throw the ball then after I finish my mental checklist I have up to eight 300 pound men run-in g at me as I try to stand there calmly and deliver a ball to a person while staying completely still and clam trusting those around me to do their job so I can do mine. But like life sometimes I get rocked from someone I don’t see coming, and other times I make a great play. Like life, sometimes you get rocked and other times you do amazing but its all about how you respond after a great play or a bad one. You. Use cycle through the moment you had by reflecting, giving yourself props or fixing it and then moving on cause there is more coming.
I have been fortunate enough to have given many speeches. I have spoken in front of many different audiences, from many different backgrounds as well as a variety in audience size. I also try to seek out these opportunities as I believe we can always become better at communication. I think practice with being out of your comfort zone and speaking in front of larger groups as well as people of very different ideologies and beliefs, is key to success in life. Being able to communicate with anybody is a skill that I think is extremely important skill that directly correlates to all fashions of life, from work, to school, to meeting new people and creating new connections.
My experience with practice/rehearsal for a performance was reciting my words, until I can memorize my thoughts almost completely and to test out how I want to word and say things. I would also have my family sit down and I would rehearse on them and ask for feedback. Try again in the mirror with the feedback and look at how I am standing, my eye contact and how much fidgeting I am doing. I dislike performing but I also like it since it helps me get better and get over the fear of public speaking.
Since I have done theater for a while, I have had to endure many different rehearsals (music, dancing, acting, etc.). These rehearsals each focused on different aspects of performing and offered new information regarding our final performances. I would say that rehearsal is a crucial aspect of getting to a performance, without rehearsing, there would be no way to perform the material. I also wrote a speech for my high school graduation and spoke in front of my peers, families, friends, and teachers. Practicing my speech many times before delivering it aided in my confidence as well as the actual performance of the speech. So, I believe that practice and performing go hand in hand, without one you cannot have the other.