{"id":3642,"date":"2010-09-18T20:17:12","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T03:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=3642"},"modified":"2010-09-18T17:17:28","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T00:17:28","slug":"a-toast-mistress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/09\/18\/a-toast-mistress\/","title":{"rendered":"A toast, mistress!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In yesterday’s entry I mentioned that I went way outside my comfort zone the other night.<\/p>\n

What could that mean?<\/p>\n

…Probably not what some may think! I attended my very first meeting of Toastmasters International<\/a>, specifically the Niteshifters<\/a> chapter that meets at the University of Victoria<\/a>. I’ve been interested in knowing what Toastmasters is all about for a while – but their usual early morning meeting times really didn’t ring my chimes. Then I found Niteshifters<\/em> and saw that they meet at 7:45pm. That’s way better than 7:45am in my books. \"\"<\/p>\n

And so I’ll give it a go. This is truly way outside my comfort zone. First, it’s a group. I’m joining a group. Second, it’s all about public speaking – something that to this day scares me. It’s not like I’m a bad public speaker (if<\/strong> I’m prepared), but I’m not comfortable<\/em> with it. I fear it.<\/p>\n

And I’m completely<\/em> mortified by the notion of extemporaneous Table Topics<\/a> speaking: if I haven’t had the time to research and write a treatise first, I’m inclined to freeze in fear. How I would love to get over myself…<\/p>\n

I haven’t had to prepare and give lectures for a long time, and now I realize that I’m completely out of the practice of public speaking even when I have prepared material. I’m hoping Niteshifters<\/em> will help me find my public (speaking) voice – the one that’s been tap-tap-tapping out of the keyboard here for years. I don’t think I’m a totally stupid person, but lately I’ve let myself get sidelined when it comes to public spoken voice – and that’s just dumb.<\/p>\n

Oh, interesting side note: while New Westminster, BC was the first non-US city to express an interest in starting a Toastmasters chapter outside of the US (an interest which prompted Toastmasters to add “International” to its name in 1930<\/a>), New Westminster apparently didn’t follow through and therefore wasn’t the first to start a non-US chapter. That distinction goes to Victoria, BC, which in 1935 became the first Toastmasters club chartered outside the United States<\/a>. How about that? \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In yesterday’s entry I mentioned that I went way outside my comfort zone the other night. What could that mean? …Probably not what some may think! I attended my very first meeting of Toastmasters International, specifically the Niteshifters chapter that meets at the University of Victoria. I’ve been interested in knowing what Toastmasters is all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,1242,1114],"tags":[20143],"class_list":["post-3642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-just_so","category-leadership","tag-toastmasters"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3642"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3649,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions\/3649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}