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Self-Reflection Essay

Stefan Wandtke

Comm-1020

Professor Bingham
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The principles learned from the 1020 course have proved to be extremely

valuable in both an academic and workplace setting. There have been several

principles that have helped in these settings. Some of these principles include

managing speech anxiety, analyzing audience, and speech organization (OHair,

2013; P.19, 41, 97).

Public speaking is not something I used to particularly enjoy. I had some

doubts in my ability and being able to manage my insecurities and anxiety. Being

able to apply principles such as identifying what makes me nervous, meditation,

and learning from feedback from previous speeches has helped me in the class. Its

also helped me in other classes to take a step back and realize I can accomplish my

public speaking opportunities.

Being able to look and analyze my audience has been useful in the class, but

has really affected how I approach situations outside of the class. I have an

interpersonal class that I am taking at the same time as this course. Both classes

combined to help me understand how to address an audience and how to

communicate with that audience. Im able to better look at an age group,

occupation, education, ethnic and cultural backgrounds of an audience and gauge

how I need to present myself and my speeches. Be analyzing my audience Ive been

able to work with clients better in the workplace. I can be more other-oriented in my

focus and achieve a more effective delivery of information to my clients.

At the beginning of the semester I wrote my expectations of the course. I

hoped to learn better communication strategies to take into a sales and business

environment. I wanted to learn how to better present myself and the information I
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deliver. Lastly, I wanted to use this course as a launchpad for furthering my

academic career as well as workplace communication.

This course has been able to deliver on all my expectations. I have received

some great feedback throughout the semester on the various in class presentations.

I took all of this as something positive and as a learning experience. Its been a

great course, which gave me more exposure to the proper development and

organization of a speech to have a more successful delivery of my messages.