fandomhigh | Entries tagged with speech

"So, um." Jon rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "It was brought to my attention last week that apparently people don't actually enjoy small-talk." Which just made him want to ask why so many of them insisted on it! "So I thought I would...well, that is, I'd like to know just what it is you do enjoy talking about. If you wanted to say."

Which possibly should have been a first-day topic, but look, he never claimed to be good at this!

intheeyeofthebeholding

Jon nodded to them as they settled. "Up until now, we've been largely trying to talk about our own things and connect that way, but apparently one of the principles of conversation is 'embracing small talk'." Did that sound as horrible to you as it did to him?

"So today we're going to talk about the weather. And only the weather." Definitely not anything to do with this weekend. "And we're going to talk about the weather for as long as we're able."

This might be a really short class. Unless someone got Jon going on a tangent about climate change.

intheeyeofthebeholding

Jon was smiling. He was doing his best. It looked a bit pained.

"Today's tip for conversation is to be enthusiastic. You want to show enthusiasm for what people are discussing. So that's what we're going to practice. Each of you is going to choose a topic to discuss, and the others of us will be enthusiastic about it. Whether we are or not."

He waved note cards. "I have suggestions again if you can't think of something to talk about."

intheeyeofthebeholding

"Right. So." Going great so far, Jon. "One of the tips to practicing conversation is to never assume you understand the other person." He was great at that; he rarely understood anyone. "So we're going to practice that today. Let's have a conversation about anything, but assume you know nothing about what the other person is saying, and ask them to explain everything. Politely. And we also have to not get upset with the person asking for explanations; the idea is to think about what you're saying and explain it clearly."

That...probably was not what this tip meant. But look, you gave a scholar bad at interpersonal interactions this class, and you got what you got, moose.

"I have a few cards of things to talk about if you can't think of anything." Because he certainly couldn't.

intheeyeofthebeholding

"Right." Jon nodded. "So, today is about starting a conversation."

He paused awkwardly.

"Apparently one of the best ways to do that is by asking a question. Some suggested questions are," he looked at the note card he'd written out, "What brought you here; I like a part of your outfit, where did you get it; have you heard about this news story; have you seen such-and-such movie; and what's on your bucket list. I...um. Well, I try not to ask questions myself." For reasons.

"Which doesn't mean it isn't a good idea! So maybe we could try that. Each of you can ask me a question and ask each other a question, and I'll...do something, and let's see if we can keep each conversation going for..." Well, it was a one-hour class, and that would be six conversations if he could not-ask questions back... "For ten minutes each. At least. You don't have to ask those I mentioned, just anything."

Maybe they'd talk to each other a lot and he could get out of this. That was totally in the spirit of the class, right?

intheeyeofthebeholding

Jon looked at his (thankfully small) class and sighed. "Hello. I...well, I've given up on asking the moose for specific courses at this point. So. I'm Jonathan Sims, and welcome to The Art of Conversation, apparently. The first week of classes is traditionally for introductions, which seems like as good a start of conversation as any. If you're going to talk with someone, you should know who they are and vice versa."

He took a deep breath and stood a little straighter. "As I said, I'm Jonathan Sims. I come from England - Bournemouth originally and London more recently - and roughly this year. And I am here because I'm meant to be instructing you. Now you." He nodded to them.

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Okay, did anyone else go past that weird-ass tree in the park yet today?" Josh asked. "It's covered in birds and crap."

Sounds appealing, Josh.

"Anyway," he continued, flopping into his chair, "I'm looking forward to everyone's final project about selling this school to people who've never heard of the place. We'll go alphabetically, so Anders, you're up!"

Josh took a sip of his coffee and prepared to be entertained.

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

Josh was rocking his amazing Hanukkah sweater, okay? Okay. You wish your holiday sweater was this cool. ~~Okay, probably not but shhhh.~~

He looked at his students and grinned. "Okay. Today's speech: pretend it's picture day and this--the sweater you're wearing right now-- is the outfit you're immortalized in. Explain your fashion choice to your hypothetical future children. And....go."

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Hey, everyone! Hope you left room after lunch for these delicious cookies I baked for you myself!" Josh said, pointing to plates of cookies he found behind the classroom door.

Don't make Josh bake. It just ends badly for everyone.

"As the cookies may have reminded you, we are heading into the holiday season, which means finals are just around the corner. As your final exam project, due in two weeks, I would like you to work on a thirty minute presentation, with visual aids, that would convince students thinking of applying here to join us. Today, I need you to be able to successfully deflect answers to the following questions: 'But what if you turn into a baby?' 'I heard someone accidentally dated their mother!' and 'Rain of pudding can't be hygenic,' which yes, is a statement more than a question, but you get the point. Have a cookie, work out your reponses, etc., etc. Ready...go."

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

When the students came into the Danger Room, Josh was on hold with his airline on his real phone. "I'm on hold," he told them. "I'm in a hellish hold world of holding. But since this is the holidays, get used to it."

He pointed to three phones. "Okay, these are linked to the computer in here, don't ask me how, and will send you through three separate holiday hell scenarios. Garik, your flight has been cancelled and if you don't show up this year, Grandma is going to give your portion of the inheritance to Embarassing Butt Disease Research, where they will put up a huge building with your name on it. Your job is to get on a new flight. Anders, you have gotten completely lost getting to your friend's sister-in-law's house even though you swore you knew where it was." He pointed to the phone. "You need to get directions without admitting how very, very wrong you were. And Kathy, you forgot to defrost the turkey until the day of Thanksgiving. You are talking to the Butterball hotline to see if there is anything you can do to save Thanksgiving or if you're going to be the family joke for the next thirty years. Okay? Okay!"

And with that, Josh went back to listening to hellish hold music.

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

There were three rostrums at the front of the classroom today. Students, be very afraid.

"Right," Josh said, sitting in one of the desks. "Everything in the news is awful and I want to sit down with an industrial sized bag of half-priced Halloween candy and annoy the hell out of you to make myself feel better...and I realized that I'm a teacher at a school with laughably lax ideas about what's appropriate, so guess what. I'm gonna sit her with an industrial sized bag of half-priced Halloween candy--" he held it up, "--and you are going to be Presidential candidates in a debate." He shrugged. "And let's be honest, you're all more qualified than most of the folks currently running. I will ask you a series of questions, and the one with the best answers will get a Reese's cup."

Ooooh. Ahhh.

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Tomorrow is a pretty important day in a lot of different places," Josh said. "Here in the US, we call it Veterans Day, but around the world it's known as Remembrance Day or Armistace Day, and it commemorates the end of World War I on November 11, 1911, at 11:11 in the morning because if you've already got a theme, go for the whooooole theme. Anyway, it's a time to remember people who have fought in combat zones. And sometimes people get confused about what counts as a veterans as opposed to a member of the military, and get it confused with Memorial Day, which is set aside to remember everyone who died, in particular. This is to say thank you to those who are still with us, and also to remember those who aren't. So naturally, there are speeches."

He took a sip from his coffee. "I want you to give me a speech about a veteran you either know or have looked up information about, and explain why it's important to remember them even after they are out of the military. And maybe, just maybe, fund their medical expenses and potential mental health issues and make sure they have a job and stuff."

Not that Josh had opinions. Cough. "Anyway, you have the first half of the period to research and the second to wow me with you words. Go."

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"First of all, congratulations to Kathy for the high honor of winning a plastic crown at the dance on Saturday," Josh said with a wink. "I'll assume that you won because you practiced your speech in this class, and nothing like reality is going to change my mind on that."

Good to see that Josh was in a very rational mood today...

"Sure, there's canned speeches and the ability to make persuasive arguments in front of large groups, to recite talking points in a way that make them feel organic, but a lot of the speaking you do in life doesn't have notes. Thinking on your feet is essential, especially if you've dozed off in the middle of class or a staff meeting and have absolutely no idea what's going on. So today you three are going to do a bit of a team building exercise in making a coherent story. I'm going to start with you and demand to know why you weren't paying attention--" he pointed to a ~~moddable~~ student, "--and you're going to give me your best sob story. The next kid jumps in and adds details, and you guys just keep going until I know longer find your story plausible." He grinned. "It'll be fun!"

Josh had a weird idea of what was fun.

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Right, so Homecoming is this weekend, which means it's time for Homecoming Court. Today I want you to give a speech about why you are stunningly qualified to be on the court and why no one else in your grade and gender is. Smear campaigns are trendy!" Josh said. "Make stuff up! It's not like anyone fact checks any more."

Someone turn off Josh's Fox News. He's getting depressed.

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Afternoon, folks," Josh said, drinking from his coffee in a shocking change of pace surprising to no one. "Hey, everyone," Josh said. "There's been a recent news story about this woman in Kentucky who won't do her job--" tell us how you really feel, Josh, "--of signing wedding licenses for people in her county because she doesn't believe people who are the same sex should get married."

Josh snorted. "I didn't think we should fund stupid things like Congressional salaries, but I still showed up for work in the government every day. Anyway, she's been in the news a lot and someone managed to wrangle her a rope line pass at the Pope, who is the ruler of about a zillion Catholics around the world. She's not a Catholic, by the way, and is part of religion that thinks he's going straight to hel,l but don't expect a lot of internal consistency from this lady. Anyway, she met him, he gave her a rosary and a kind of rote reply and got on a plane, and then her lawyers got on the news media crowing about how him meeting with her was endorsing her position."

He shrugged. "Now don't get me wrong, Catholicism isn't exactly a font of liberal social thinking on this front, but the Pope seems to be embracing the 'don't be a dick' philosophy, which I'm pretty sure was what the Beautitudes would be if they were distilled for the Twitter generation. So after a few days of awkwardness, the Vatican finally came out with a 'nooooo, that's not really what happened, turns out the Pope pretty much has no idea who this lady is and the archbishop who arranged this meeting is Quite Fired', but her lawyers are still doubling down on this meeting."

"So, as people in a class on Speech, what's their next play? Do they call the Pope a liar?"

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Right, so your parents or guardians or weird friends are coming to visit this weekend," Josh said, "so today we're going to have a little field trip around town and you are going to BS your way through an island tour."

He smiled evilly.

"This'll be fun!"

Well, maybe?

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Today we're going to work on our diction," Josh said. "You can have the most amazing speech on paper, but if no one can hear you saying it, it's not going to do a lot of good, right?"

He didn't wait for a response because he was Josh, and let's be real, he very rarely waited for anyone else to talk.

"Everyone stand up. We'll start with easy stuff, then work our way to Gilbert and Sullivan."

Oh, you wish he was kidding.

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Hey everyone. It has come to my attention that I forgot to give you an assignment last week, which means this week we learn about extemporaneous speaking."

Oops.

"The goal of extemp speaking is to pursuade or inform your audience on a given question. You should have an introduction, and then the body of your speech should give the audience facts to bolster your argument and flow right into the conclusion of your talk. You shouldn't seem like you're reading bullet points. I'll give you your topics and you have ten minutes to research on your phones and right a quick outline down, then get ready to impress us. We'll go...alphabetically today. You have to talk for seven minutes."

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"So that was a weekend," Josh said. "Wow, there were a lot of faces I'd completely forgotten about."

So he'd hidden, as one does.

"Anyway, you had a speech assignment for this week to tell us something about the history of the island that you learned this week, either through research at the library or from other sources like the radio or first-person accounts. You have fifteen minutes to astound me."

He sat back in his chair.

professor-lyman.livejournal.com

"Afternoon, kids," Josh said, drinking from his mug of coffee because ask him if he cared that it was past lunch time. "I'm Josh Lyman and most of you look pretty familiar--" (not that he could remember most of their names), "--so introductions should go pretty fast. This is Speech class, so I'm going to give you five minutes to throw together a two minute 'hi, my name is' speech. Iinclude your name, class, dorm floor and two facts about your home dimension that doesn't make all of us want to faceplant in boredom into the top of our desks. You can use props, light pyrotechnics, magic, whatever. Just make sure no one can forget your name because let's face it, I'm terrible with names. I'll just call you Skippy all semester long otherwise."

He leaned back against his desk. "Sometimes speeches need a little more research, of course, so this week I want you to head down to the library to find a topic for a fifteen minute long--and yes, I will be counting with a stopwatch--informative speech about, ohhhhhhh, the history of the island. This weekend is also a big reunion weekend, so you may also include interviews with the alumni coming back as first degree sources." He grinned. "Gives you an excuse to walk up to someone you don't know and start up a conversation, right?"

He pointed to his right. "We'll start alphabetically with Bob over there when you're ready to begin your speeches."

...there was no Bob in the class.

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