Reflection 8 -- SEM 3 -- Adi Syachrin

Today, Miss introduced our next topic for Term 3: Graduation speeches.

I was personally very intrigued with this topic even when she first introduced it as I always had hoped of being able to deliver my own graduation speech. Thanking my classmates, my teachers, my family, all of those components are the rare moments where I'm willing to stand in front of a crowd, absorbing publicity. It saddened me quite a bit when they said that I was no longer eligible for valedictorian (because I joined in grade 8 and DepEd requires for you to be apart of the school since grade 7😭) which also meant I wouldn't be doing a graduation speech. But this exercise was a good opportunity to overcome that.

I'm not someone who's a big fan of speeches, although I admit that I have enough skills to deliver a good one. My main flaw is that I yap to much which can sometimes derail me from the main speech but it's not too bad of a hindrance. As long as I keep to my notes, I can mostly deliver a decent speech.

In this lesson, we watched a few speeches delivered by white men. Sad, I know. Miss told us to focus primarily on their literary or rhetoric devices and the different methods in which they delivered their speech.

It was hard (at least for me) to not be too biased about it since I didn't like either of the two speeches. Or no. Both speeches were good. If I had been listening to just the speech and nothing else, things would have been okay. But this was part of a video.

The first speech was by Steve Jobs (who I CANNOT respect as a human being <3 he's very talented but in reality, he was very flawed). His speech consisted of three stories detailing his entire life. A good speech, objectively, but I did not enjoy listening to him. My reactions to his speech were less than nice.

The next speech was done by a mostly innocent young man who graduated from King's Academy. His speech was also good, although it sounded rather preach-y and akin to a sermon. Especially when he started throwing Jesus Christ as the hook to his speech.

I don't generally see anything wrong with him preaching, but it does get repetitive and somewhat like a sales pitch with how he uses his religion as the "lesson" from his speech: "Build your relationship with God first." I could only imagine that one atheist person in the crowd awkwardly listening to his sermon. A good lesson and a good use of rhetoric devices, although his face scares me too. (Next time, I'll just listen to the speeches and not look at the speaker's face)

Was my review incredibly superficial and shallow? No doubt. I'm not about to deny that.

Perhaps next time, I'll primarily listen to just audio files this time.

Thank you for reading.