Day 5: The Day I Returned to Boot Camp by Catherine Heinrich

July 25th, 2019

The Day I Returned to Boot Camp
by Catherine Heinrich

As I looked at the itinerary, I knew and feared what was about to come. One year prior, I had gone to the UCSD GELS program which took my fellow students and I from San Diego to Washington D.C. to learn how to present data to our various Congressmen, to attempt to enact government legislation. During my time there, we had to go to what the program called “public speaking boot camp”, which allowed the students to learn how to avoid the common blunders of public speaking, and to establish more confidence in there ability to effectively present information to a crowd.
            I joined my assigned group members at the first station, and took a deep breath in a futile attempt to contain my nerves. Like the majority of my peers, I have always had a mild phobia of public speaking, and while I had gone through boot camp before, and knew it would help me improve my public speaking further, I still was not completely comfortable presenting information off of the top of my head.
            I picked my topic out of the envelope and attempted to construct an intriguing point of conversation, and as I had anticipated, I struggled to maintain eye contact with members of the audience, and began to fidget as I started to lose confidence in what I had to say. It seemed as though my skills had reverted a decent amount since I had last given a formal speech.
            At first I felt naive. My other group members had been able to work through their topics with relative ease, but as the practice went on, I noticed that I began to improve. I started to gain better control of my hand motions, I became more openly enthusiastic in my speech, and I began to have less doubt in my ability to compose a compelling speech out of thin air. I heard the loud cracks of the clickers that were used to mark filler words becoming fewer and farther between.
            While I still have much more growth to make in the world of public speaking, returning to the public speaking boot camp helped me improve dramatically in a matter of minutes, and reminded me that I have no reason to fear speaking in front of a crowd. I look forward to presenting information with my team on our assigned subject in the coming days, and I believe my other team members are as well.

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