Junior Parent Night - Wednesday, September 16

For this meeting of the Junior parents of Sturgis I was asked by Mr. Steedman to come in and say a few words about my own experiences as a Junior in the school last year and give advice to them about what to expect from their own children as they begin their Junior year. I was very enthusiastic about giving this talk because I knew it would be a challenge for me to speak in front of a lot of people because I would become anxious and I hoped it would help me learn better public speaking skills. To prepare for the talk I wrote down a few key points I wanted to make about the IB Program during Junior year and thought for a while about what kind of advice I would give the parents. I looked over the list before I left to go to the talk and I was able to remember all the points I was going to make. During the talk there was one other Senior who spoke about their Junior year experience as well which helped take some of the anxiety away. I was able to touch upon the all points I had thought of and I gave advice which the parents seemed to really appreciate. I also believed I did very well with answering all their questions after I talked to them. All in all I felt I did a very good job, but I was still not sure if was as good as it seemed and I was skeptical that I may have made some mistakes. However the next morning at school when I asked Mr. Steedman how the rest of the meeting went all my anxieties relaxed when he said that the other Senior and I did a fantastic job just as he would have liked and that he appreciated our enthusiasm in giving the talk. This reassurance really showed me that I had reached my goals of overcoming the affect of my anxieties and developing new and better public speaking skills. I was very pleased.