The first thing that comes to my mind with practice and rehearsal is when I did theater crew in Middle school and the beginning of high school. Before being a part of the crew I had no idea how much practice and preparation went into a show, even just a middle school play. Rehearsals would last from right when we got out of school all the way until 8/9 o’clock at night and as the show got closer sometimes we would work into the night to make sure that everything was ready. You would think that the crew members did not have much practicing to do but we sure did. We would block the stage and practice the scene changes getting all of the props and furniture on and off the stage as quickly as possible as well as practicing outfit changes and hair and makeup. The crew plans every detail of the play and makes all the magic happen. It would be a pretty boring play if there were no sound effects, no lights, no props and no costumes. In order to have all those moving pieces flow smoothly it is imperative for a crew to practice because it will ultimately lead to a much better performance. If there was no practice or preparation these shows would have been a nightmare for the crew and for the talent. But because we spent so much time at rehearsals we would always have packed shows and the reputation of having one of the best high school theater programs in all of Massachusetts.
Preparation for a speech comes in multiple different ways. For myself, I have both had experiences of lots of preparation to minimum preparation. My experiences with having lots of preparation, I break it down into multiple parts. I first start with figure out the message of what needs to be said or done. When I say down want should be the purpose and theme of the speech, the preparation comes even easier. The rest of the parts including writing the outline or speech and then making sure the key topic is being said. I then make sure I could do the speech to just myself before the day of the speech, around at least once per day a few days before the speech. At the day of the speech, I make sure all the speech is good, makes sense, and tries to relay the correct message. However, when it come sot preparation for speech with minimum time that’s when a different plan goes in. If it’s a on the fly impromptu speech I focus on the main topic that needs to be portrayed and to stick with that topic. If there’s some time to think on the speech more, I make sure that the speech feels well prepared as if there was a lot more time for a speech. Overall, an effective speech to me knows what it needs to say, and give is the proper thought it needs to within whatever the timeline for talking is.
Practicing for public speaking is something that I struggle with the most, as I do great in private, or even on call with my boyfriend explaining the material I must cover. However, when it comes to presenting it, I struggle so much with meeting the time standard, I am always below what I need to be at. I talk fast and leave out tiny details within the speech whenever I present to a large audience. Even though I usually practice my speech everyday, multiples times a day, I still get so nervous in font of people. I am currently reading the book ‘Brain Sex’, as I am fascinated its neuroscience, and it talks about how the distraction of the brain will help ease anxiety, and such. So, when doing presentations, I started moving my feet a little, or fidgeting with something, such as a paper clip. I made my times better, but not significantly, and I sill had a shaky voice. Of course, frustrated with this I have looked up a few techniques to avoid this later. But majority said the same thing; taking deep breaths before presentation and during, picture people naked, nobody cares, etc.
I want to be able to do well with public speaking, I have suffered with social anxiety majority of my life, and it has made presentations torture for me. I want to go into the field of forensic psychology, and I want to have the skill of being able to talk in front of people with confidence, and with no shaky voice.
So, in terms of giving speeches where all I do is talk, I have next to nothing. I’ve done presentations for studies before. Although, these were usually very informal and were accompanied with a slideshow of some kind. What I have more experience in is music. Throughout most of my academic career basically from elementary to now, I’ve been in the school band. This includes in highschool where I played in the marching, concert, and jazz bands. I’ve even made it to regionals a couple of times in highschool. And even before that I was learning to play the piano. So that is where most of my experience lies in regards to practicing for performances. I understand good ways to hone a performance. Although, There are some pretty big differences between giving a speech like we are talking about and playing music. Playing music is more about perfecting something set in stone compared to giving a speech which requires some degree of improvisation to it. The main exception in music is playing a solo in a jazz piece, which I never got to do (honestly one of my main regrets from my time in band). I don’t think I’d be terrible at it though. Because those presentations were very similar to giving a speech but you show the audience your outline. Although I never practiced much for those. Combining my experience with practicing for presentations with my ability to give presentations should be how I proceed with this.
Throughout my academic journey I have made presentations and written many papers that I had to read out loud or talk about to my peers. When presenting a slide show or power point presentation I prepare by practicing the presentation by myself and timing it and then in front of a few of my friends and timing myself. I get very anxious easily, especially when speaking in public. By presenting to some friends, it helps ease the process for me. However, it never truly makes me feel confident in my work because my friends are no strangers to me, and I feel more comfortable with them. Even though this is the case, rehearsing even with just my friends gives me an idea of how the process will go when presenting to a group of people. Practice is practice, so by doing this I am repeatedly training my brain to be more comfortable with speaking in larger settings. I have also had to rehearse group presentations before. Group presentations are more stressful to me because it is harder to find time to rehearse between all the group members. By getting together and practicing together we can find what flows best for us and that would make us look more professional. This can also be something you can improve when rehearsing by yourself. By finding what order flows best and how to word things to make it easier for listeners to follow will make you look more professional and overall be better spoken.
My experiences with public speaking are limited to mostly class presentations of various styles, mostly traditional thought. In the past, I used to rely heavily on reading directly from slides during class presentations; however, towards junior year, I realized this approach was lackluster in impact and hindered my progress in public speaking. Over time, I began focusing on understanding the material better to keep the text minimal on slides and practicing explanations as if I were teaching. This not only improved my presentations (in the eyes of my teachers) but also enhanced my confidence in public speaking a bit. Despite these improvements, I still find myself struggling with self-confidence in public speaking and often have difficulty forming thoughts quickly and resort to using filler words too often and rambling to avoid awkward silences. One of my most significant experiences, one which I am still quite proud of, was a presentation to 200 students during my senior year. It went well because I practiced extensively and co-presented with another student, which took some mental load off my shoulders, as well as directed my focus towards familiar faces in the audience. I lack professional public speaking experience, but I know it will play a vital role in my future as I will likely be interviewed for the pharmacy program at UNE and pharmacist positions and internships.
All through the end of elementary school, all middle school and a couple of years into high school I played in my school’s band, which for me would be the biggest example of rehearsal I’ve had throughout my life so far. I started off playing clarinet from the 4th grade into the 7th grade, halfway through the 7th I made the jump to playing bass clarinet which is a much larger and much more complex instrument compared to a regular sized clarinet. With this big of a jump, I had to rehearse a lot more often than others to keep up with everyone around me, this included having to stay a lot more focused during full band rehearsal and taking my bass clarinet home every weekend to practice my technique by myself. Band at this time was very important in my life as lots of my friends were involved in band at the time as well so my main motivator was to be able to keep up with them so I knew I could prove to myself, them and to my conductor, that I have what it takes. This all paid off in the end for me and my band mates as in our last band competition, we had some of the best scores and my personal favorite composition for songs for that part of the year and we ended up with the highest school out of all of the different bands that came and competed that weekend, and following that we were able to go to Canobie Lake Park (fairly popular amusement park ~20 minutes away from our town) for the rest of the afternoon / evening. Although I have fallen out of love with band and no longer play Bass Clarinet, all the practice, rehearsal, and time I put into learning the instrument is still one of my largest achievements to date.
The power of practice and rehearsal is unprecedented. With enough practice, I think it is possible to really master any skill, academically, professionally, or athletically. Personally, I can draw lines with myself to all three of the categories in which practice has a direct relation to performance. Academically, math is the first thing that comes to mind. Looking at a problem with mathematics, without a doubt I will not be able to figure out the problem, some can, but I cannot. However, if I practice similar problems repeatedly, I begin to master the skill of solving said problem. Professionally, although I do not have an extremely “professional” job, the rehearsal of guest service and customer interaction has improved my communication skills tenfold. I worked as a customer service representative, where all day there is unhappy customers needing solutions, to be able to communicate with those people is a skill that needs lots of repeated interaction. Athletically, I powerlift, in which the entire name of the game is consistency and repetition in the gym. I have not missed a session of lifting in the past 3 years and have gone the exact days prescribed by my coach for each of those years, which have yielded large strength gains during this time. Consistency, repetition, and rehearsal undoubtedly have a large implication on performance as one can only learn and get better through failing, and consistency.
I have experience practicing for public speaking in a couple different scenarios. I gave a speech at one of my best friend’s weddings a few years ago, and that was the first time I had ever spoken to a crowd of people outside of academia. I prepared by typing out my speech and making edits until I thought it sounded good in my head. Then, I rehearsed it by presenting it to my parents before the wedding. Because I had practiced speaking it to someone other than myself, I was able to memorize parts of it and not have to be staring at my phone the whole time to read it. The majority of my public speaking experience is from school. The earliest presentation I can remember giving was in 4th grade. It was called “The 4th Grade Project”. We got to research a topic of our choice, create a poster or model, and present it to the class. I remember practicing reading my essay over and over again at home. Although I can’t remember exactly how well it went because it was 10 grades ago, I remember that I felt confident enough to go first in the whole class, and then I went around to some of the other classrooms to present it a second, third, and fourth time. Fast forward to a little more recently, most of my presentations have been given in my last years of high school and beginning years of college. For group presentations, we’d all get together and run through our slides before class, and this helped things run smoothly. I have to admit, there are some presentations I have given that I didn’t rehearse beforehand, and I’m sure the class could tell that I didn’t know the content as well as I probably should have.
From my personal experiences with public speaking, what I have done for preparation for those occasions is mostly go over the slides or notes I have written down and make key points or phrases I want to say in my head to then use during the speech. This method was most useful to me when I am presenting something I have done or something I’ve created. For example, I had to be the master of ceremonies for a Boy Scout award ceremony and speak about achievements that scouts have done over the past couple of months. In preparation for this I created an outline of all of the awards and achievements that are being acknowledged and created sections where each would be presented. I then made sure that I fully understood the details of the awards and knew what to say about them when it came time to present it. This preparation worked with this occasion because I have been the audience for many of these ceremonies and had a lot of background knowledge of what I had to say. Although, this strategy is not always beneficial. From my experience of using this strategy of just using notes for speeches I have had some cases where I didn’t study enough or had problems delivering what I wanted to say effectively and resulted in a bad outcome. A way that I could have avoided this was to verbally go over what I want to say and practice repeatedly. This should avoid any negative outcome and boost my confidence overall for future speeches.
Throughout my life, I have participated in cheerleading. For as long as I can remember, I spent two to four nights a week at the gym practicing. Sometimes, it would be just me, while other times it would be the whole team, but it was always aimed at excelling in competitions. Practicing for a speech and preparing for a cheer competition are vastly different; one focuses on doing your best, while the other strives for perfection. I used to enjoy public speaking, participating in local theater and giving speeches at school. When I was nine, every day after school, I would line up my stuffed animals as a fake audience and deliver little speeches in front of them to build my confidence. My mother used to speak in Washington D.C. about certain laws she wished to change; I would watch her and practice her paper in front of the mirror.
For me personally, the amount of time I spend practicing a certain task directly correlates with my performance of said task, whether it’s an instrument, test or speech, the amount of time that I spend studying/practicing said thing always has a direct impact on my performance and I have experienced many examples of this being true. First, for example, for my first round of exams here at UNE, I didn’t study very hard because I figured that I already knew the material and that I could just only study a little bit and still get a grade that I would be satisfied with. Ultimately, when I got the grades back for all my exams, although I didn’t fail, I was indeed not satisfied with the grades that I received and that’s an experience that I’ve then learned from and I’ve been studying hard ever since. Secondly, another example of practicing helping me is when it comes to instruments. I’ve been practicing guitar for the past couple of months and I’ve made significant progress since I first started playing and I can directly correlate all the progress I’ve made with guitar with the amount of time that I’ve spent practicing.
Throughout my life, my experiences with practice or rehearsal has been very limited academically. The majority of my experience with rehearsal has been with dance. In this scenario, the relationship between preparation and performance is very clear. In my opinion, preparation in dance is both practicing the dance as much as you possibly can and having your body warmed up and stretched on performance day. This preparation directly links to how well you perform when the time comes in my opinion. The more prepared you are, the better your performance. While dance has been my main experience with preparation and performance, that doesn’t mean I have no experience with it academically. For example, last year I took an online American Sign Language class where we had to record videos of ourselves signing for assignments. In this case I found my conclusion about preparation and performance with dance to be the same. The more I practiced beforehand, whether it was an exact script of what I was going to sign, or just practicing sign in general, the better my performance was. And while I did not often rehearse for presentations in high school, the times I did, I performed better when the actual presentation came. Even when it comes to just doing a writing or math assignment, practicing helps you get better. So based on my experiences, I assume the relationship I found with preparation and performance when it comes to dance, holds true for all experiences where performance can be judged, and even where it can’t. Preparation is just practice, and the more you practice a certain skill, the better you will get at it.
My whole life I have done cheerleading, for as long as I can remember two-four nights a week I was at the gym practicing. Sometimes it would be just me or other times the whole team, but it was always to become the best at competitions. Practicing for a speech and for a cheer competition are vastly different, one is attempting to do the best you can while the other is striving for perfection. I used to be into public speaking, I was in the local theater and did speeches at school. When I was 9 every day after school, I would line up my stuffed animals up into a fake crowd and give little speeches Infront to build my confidence. My mother used to talk in Washington D.C. for certain laws and how she wished to change them, I would watch and take her paper practicing it in front of the mirror hoping to be able to do the same one day. During my high school years at open houses, I started giving talks about why I chose the school and how it benefited me. Overall, speaking and practicing has been a huge portion of my life and will continue to be for the rest of my life.
I grew up playing ice hockey and softball since I was 6. I played all high school and never made it to a championship game until my senior year when my team for hockey and softball both went to the championships. My softball team’s goal all year was to make it to the championship game at the end of the season, we practiced rain or shine, inside or outside, we watched films and had team dinners all the time. We practiced like we had never won before and played games like we had never lost before. We first took down our rivals who hadn’t lost a game in 2 full years and then ended up winning the championship because we practice our hearts out. This was probably one of the most rewarding things I have accomplished in my life. When it came to hockey, we worked hard on and off the ice to get to the championship, is probably the hardest I have ever been pushed in my life. We ended up losing the hockey championship, but it was not without a good fight. In the end, to get to both of those championship games we had to work and practice extremely hard.
17 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 2”
The first thing that comes to my mind with practice and rehearsal is when I did theater crew in Middle school and the beginning of high school. Before being a part of the crew I had no idea how much practice and preparation went into a show, even just a middle school play. Rehearsals would last from right when we got out of school all the way until 8/9 o’clock at night and as the show got closer sometimes we would work into the night to make sure that everything was ready. You would think that the crew members did not have much practicing to do but we sure did. We would block the stage and practice the scene changes getting all of the props and furniture on and off the stage as quickly as possible as well as practicing outfit changes and hair and makeup. The crew plans every detail of the play and makes all the magic happen. It would be a pretty boring play if there were no sound effects, no lights, no props and no costumes. In order to have all those moving pieces flow smoothly it is imperative for a crew to practice because it will ultimately lead to a much better performance. If there was no practice or preparation these shows would have been a nightmare for the crew and for the talent. But because we spent so much time at rehearsals we would always have packed shows and the reputation of having one of the best high school theater programs in all of Massachusetts.
Preparation for a speech comes in multiple different ways. For myself, I have both had experiences of lots of preparation to minimum preparation. My experiences with having lots of preparation, I break it down into multiple parts. I first start with figure out the message of what needs to be said or done. When I say down want should be the purpose and theme of the speech, the preparation comes even easier. The rest of the parts including writing the outline or speech and then making sure the key topic is being said. I then make sure I could do the speech to just myself before the day of the speech, around at least once per day a few days before the speech. At the day of the speech, I make sure all the speech is good, makes sense, and tries to relay the correct message. However, when it come sot preparation for speech with minimum time that’s when a different plan goes in. If it’s a on the fly impromptu speech I focus on the main topic that needs to be portrayed and to stick with that topic. If there’s some time to think on the speech more, I make sure that the speech feels well prepared as if there was a lot more time for a speech. Overall, an effective speech to me knows what it needs to say, and give is the proper thought it needs to within whatever the timeline for talking is.
https://une1-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/ldunn7_une_edu/EbyX_msRYfBKvXaKXxsIvzkBVD_FiRbPm_N67XsN8KYaeg?e=n7XDg3
Word count: 258
Practicing for public speaking is something that I struggle with the most, as I do great in private, or even on call with my boyfriend explaining the material I must cover. However, when it comes to presenting it, I struggle so much with meeting the time standard, I am always below what I need to be at. I talk fast and leave out tiny details within the speech whenever I present to a large audience. Even though I usually practice my speech everyday, multiples times a day, I still get so nervous in font of people. I am currently reading the book ‘Brain Sex’, as I am fascinated its neuroscience, and it talks about how the distraction of the brain will help ease anxiety, and such. So, when doing presentations, I started moving my feet a little, or fidgeting with something, such as a paper clip. I made my times better, but not significantly, and I sill had a shaky voice. Of course, frustrated with this I have looked up a few techniques to avoid this later. But majority said the same thing; taking deep breaths before presentation and during, picture people naked, nobody cares, etc.
I want to be able to do well with public speaking, I have suffered with social anxiety majority of my life, and it has made presentations torture for me. I want to go into the field of forensic psychology, and I want to have the skill of being able to talk in front of people with confidence, and with no shaky voice.
So, in terms of giving speeches where all I do is talk, I have next to nothing. I’ve done presentations for studies before. Although, these were usually very informal and were accompanied with a slideshow of some kind. What I have more experience in is music. Throughout most of my academic career basically from elementary to now, I’ve been in the school band. This includes in highschool where I played in the marching, concert, and jazz bands. I’ve even made it to regionals a couple of times in highschool. And even before that I was learning to play the piano. So that is where most of my experience lies in regards to practicing for performances. I understand good ways to hone a performance. Although, There are some pretty big differences between giving a speech like we are talking about and playing music. Playing music is more about perfecting something set in stone compared to giving a speech which requires some degree of improvisation to it. The main exception in music is playing a solo in a jazz piece, which I never got to do (honestly one of my main regrets from my time in band). I don’t think I’d be terrible at it though. Because those presentations were very similar to giving a speech but you show the audience your outline. Although I never practiced much for those. Combining my experience with practicing for presentations with my ability to give presentations should be how I proceed with this.
Throughout my academic journey I have made presentations and written many papers that I had to read out loud or talk about to my peers. When presenting a slide show or power point presentation I prepare by practicing the presentation by myself and timing it and then in front of a few of my friends and timing myself. I get very anxious easily, especially when speaking in public. By presenting to some friends, it helps ease the process for me. However, it never truly makes me feel confident in my work because my friends are no strangers to me, and I feel more comfortable with them. Even though this is the case, rehearsing even with just my friends gives me an idea of how the process will go when presenting to a group of people. Practice is practice, so by doing this I am repeatedly training my brain to be more comfortable with speaking in larger settings. I have also had to rehearse group presentations before. Group presentations are more stressful to me because it is harder to find time to rehearse between all the group members. By getting together and practicing together we can find what flows best for us and that would make us look more professional. This can also be something you can improve when rehearsing by yourself. By finding what order flows best and how to word things to make it easier for listeners to follow will make you look more professional and overall be better spoken.
My experiences with public speaking are limited to mostly class presentations of various styles, mostly traditional thought. In the past, I used to rely heavily on reading directly from slides during class presentations; however, towards junior year, I realized this approach was lackluster in impact and hindered my progress in public speaking. Over time, I began focusing on understanding the material better to keep the text minimal on slides and practicing explanations as if I were teaching. This not only improved my presentations (in the eyes of my teachers) but also enhanced my confidence in public speaking a bit. Despite these improvements, I still find myself struggling with self-confidence in public speaking and often have difficulty forming thoughts quickly and resort to using filler words too often and rambling to avoid awkward silences. One of my most significant experiences, one which I am still quite proud of, was a presentation to 200 students during my senior year. It went well because I practiced extensively and co-presented with another student, which took some mental load off my shoulders, as well as directed my focus towards familiar faces in the audience. I lack professional public speaking experience, but I know it will play a vital role in my future as I will likely be interviewed for the pharmacy program at UNE and pharmacist positions and internships.
All through the end of elementary school, all middle school and a couple of years into high school I played in my school’s band, which for me would be the biggest example of rehearsal I’ve had throughout my life so far. I started off playing clarinet from the 4th grade into the 7th grade, halfway through the 7th I made the jump to playing bass clarinet which is a much larger and much more complex instrument compared to a regular sized clarinet. With this big of a jump, I had to rehearse a lot more often than others to keep up with everyone around me, this included having to stay a lot more focused during full band rehearsal and taking my bass clarinet home every weekend to practice my technique by myself. Band at this time was very important in my life as lots of my friends were involved in band at the time as well so my main motivator was to be able to keep up with them so I knew I could prove to myself, them and to my conductor, that I have what it takes. This all paid off in the end for me and my band mates as in our last band competition, we had some of the best scores and my personal favorite composition for songs for that part of the year and we ended up with the highest school out of all of the different bands that came and competed that weekend, and following that we were able to go to Canobie Lake Park (fairly popular amusement park ~20 minutes away from our town) for the rest of the afternoon / evening. Although I have fallen out of love with band and no longer play Bass Clarinet, all the practice, rehearsal, and time I put into learning the instrument is still one of my largest achievements to date.
The power of practice and rehearsal is unprecedented. With enough practice, I think it is possible to really master any skill, academically, professionally, or athletically. Personally, I can draw lines with myself to all three of the categories in which practice has a direct relation to performance. Academically, math is the first thing that comes to mind. Looking at a problem with mathematics, without a doubt I will not be able to figure out the problem, some can, but I cannot. However, if I practice similar problems repeatedly, I begin to master the skill of solving said problem. Professionally, although I do not have an extremely “professional” job, the rehearsal of guest service and customer interaction has improved my communication skills tenfold. I worked as a customer service representative, where all day there is unhappy customers needing solutions, to be able to communicate with those people is a skill that needs lots of repeated interaction. Athletically, I powerlift, in which the entire name of the game is consistency and repetition in the gym. I have not missed a session of lifting in the past 3 years and have gone the exact days prescribed by my coach for each of those years, which have yielded large strength gains during this time. Consistency, repetition, and rehearsal undoubtedly have a large implication on performance as one can only learn and get better through failing, and consistency.
I have experience practicing for public speaking in a couple different scenarios. I gave a speech at one of my best friend’s weddings a few years ago, and that was the first time I had ever spoken to a crowd of people outside of academia. I prepared by typing out my speech and making edits until I thought it sounded good in my head. Then, I rehearsed it by presenting it to my parents before the wedding. Because I had practiced speaking it to someone other than myself, I was able to memorize parts of it and not have to be staring at my phone the whole time to read it. The majority of my public speaking experience is from school. The earliest presentation I can remember giving was in 4th grade. It was called “The 4th Grade Project”. We got to research a topic of our choice, create a poster or model, and present it to the class. I remember practicing reading my essay over and over again at home. Although I can’t remember exactly how well it went because it was 10 grades ago, I remember that I felt confident enough to go first in the whole class, and then I went around to some of the other classrooms to present it a second, third, and fourth time. Fast forward to a little more recently, most of my presentations have been given in my last years of high school and beginning years of college. For group presentations, we’d all get together and run through our slides before class, and this helped things run smoothly. I have to admit, there are some presentations I have given that I didn’t rehearse beforehand, and I’m sure the class could tell that I didn’t know the content as well as I probably should have.
From my personal experiences with public speaking, what I have done for preparation for those occasions is mostly go over the slides or notes I have written down and make key points or phrases I want to say in my head to then use during the speech. This method was most useful to me when I am presenting something I have done or something I’ve created. For example, I had to be the master of ceremonies for a Boy Scout award ceremony and speak about achievements that scouts have done over the past couple of months. In preparation for this I created an outline of all of the awards and achievements that are being acknowledged and created sections where each would be presented. I then made sure that I fully understood the details of the awards and knew what to say about them when it came time to present it. This preparation worked with this occasion because I have been the audience for many of these ceremonies and had a lot of background knowledge of what I had to say. Although, this strategy is not always beneficial. From my experience of using this strategy of just using notes for speeches I have had some cases where I didn’t study enough or had problems delivering what I wanted to say effectively and resulted in a bad outcome. A way that I could have avoided this was to verbally go over what I want to say and practice repeatedly. This should avoid any negative outcome and boost my confidence overall for future speeches.
Throughout my life, I have participated in cheerleading. For as long as I can remember, I spent two to four nights a week at the gym practicing. Sometimes, it would be just me, while other times it would be the whole team, but it was always aimed at excelling in competitions. Practicing for a speech and preparing for a cheer competition are vastly different; one focuses on doing your best, while the other strives for perfection. I used to enjoy public speaking, participating in local theater and giving speeches at school. When I was nine, every day after school, I would line up my stuffed animals as a fake audience and deliver little speeches in front of them to build my confidence. My mother used to speak in Washington D.C. about certain laws she wished to change; I would watch her and practice her paper in front of the mirror.
https://kdrake4.uneportfolio.org/journal-2/
For me personally, the amount of time I spend practicing a certain task directly correlates with my performance of said task, whether it’s an instrument, test or speech, the amount of time that I spend studying/practicing said thing always has a direct impact on my performance and I have experienced many examples of this being true. First, for example, for my first round of exams here at UNE, I didn’t study very hard because I figured that I already knew the material and that I could just only study a little bit and still get a grade that I would be satisfied with. Ultimately, when I got the grades back for all my exams, although I didn’t fail, I was indeed not satisfied with the grades that I received and that’s an experience that I’ve then learned from and I’ve been studying hard ever since. Secondly, another example of practicing helping me is when it comes to instruments. I’ve been practicing guitar for the past couple of months and I’ve made significant progress since I first started playing and I can directly correlate all the progress I’ve made with guitar with the amount of time that I’ve spent practicing.
Throughout my life, my experiences with practice or rehearsal has been very limited academically. The majority of my experience with rehearsal has been with dance. In this scenario, the relationship between preparation and performance is very clear. In my opinion, preparation in dance is both practicing the dance as much as you possibly can and having your body warmed up and stretched on performance day. This preparation directly links to how well you perform when the time comes in my opinion. The more prepared you are, the better your performance. While dance has been my main experience with preparation and performance, that doesn’t mean I have no experience with it academically. For example, last year I took an online American Sign Language class where we had to record videos of ourselves signing for assignments. In this case I found my conclusion about preparation and performance with dance to be the same. The more I practiced beforehand, whether it was an exact script of what I was going to sign, or just practicing sign in general, the better my performance was. And while I did not often rehearse for presentations in high school, the times I did, I performed better when the actual presentation came. Even when it comes to just doing a writing or math assignment, practicing helps you get better. So based on my experiences, I assume the relationship I found with preparation and performance when it comes to dance, holds true for all experiences where performance can be judged, and even where it can’t. Preparation is just practice, and the more you practice a certain skill, the better you will get at it.
My whole life I have done cheerleading, for as long as I can remember two-four nights a week I was at the gym practicing. Sometimes it would be just me or other times the whole team, but it was always to become the best at competitions. Practicing for a speech and for a cheer competition are vastly different, one is attempting to do the best you can while the other is striving for perfection. I used to be into public speaking, I was in the local theater and did speeches at school. When I was 9 every day after school, I would line up my stuffed animals up into a fake crowd and give little speeches Infront to build my confidence. My mother used to talk in Washington D.C. for certain laws and how she wished to change them, I would watch and take her paper practicing it in front of the mirror hoping to be able to do the same one day. During my high school years at open houses, I started giving talks about why I chose the school and how it benefited me. Overall, speaking and practicing has been a huge portion of my life and will continue to be for the rest of my life.
I grew up playing ice hockey and softball since I was 6. I played all high school and never made it to a championship game until my senior year when my team for hockey and softball both went to the championships. My softball team’s goal all year was to make it to the championship game at the end of the season, we practiced rain or shine, inside or outside, we watched films and had team dinners all the time. We practiced like we had never won before and played games like we had never lost before. We first took down our rivals who hadn’t lost a game in 2 full years and then ended up winning the championship because we practice our hearts out. This was probably one of the most rewarding things I have accomplished in my life. When it came to hockey, we worked hard on and off the ice to get to the championship, is probably the hardest I have ever been pushed in my life. We ended up losing the hockey championship, but it was not without a good fight. In the end, to get to both of those championship games we had to work and practice extremely hard.