Towards the end of 2018 to 2019 Academic school year, I began preparing for my student council Vice President candidacy speech that was soon going to be delivered to an audience of over 400 students. Considering that I usually lack confidence in public speaking, even in audiences of up to 20, I was extremely intimidated by the thought of standing up in front of the student body to publicly communicate my opinions and ideas for change. Before this speech, the largest audience I have ever delivered to was in an academic setting in my IAS class to 22 familiar students.
Despite my anxiousness, I was aware of what was required to have a successful speech. I needed to incorporate effective nonverbal communication, intonation, and expression whilst clearly expressing my personal thoughts and interests in ways that are ethical, appropriate and convincing to my target audience. As a result, I worked hard on ensuring a balance of opinions by using humor to further appeal to the student body. In the days leading up to the speech, I worked hard to on my delivery of the speech, emphasizing on pauses between statements, eye contact, and expression to demonstrate an engaging, unique and exciting approach that I will be taking if I get elected
Generally, the overarching purpose of my speech was to touch on my aims that formed the basis of my campaign. I attempted to communicate the following ideas in ways that would be appealing to the NIST community. Despite being ambitious, I tried to convey a realistic view of the student councils ability to create change throughout the year, without creating false promises. The following are the general points that served as a stepping stone for my campaign:
- Further promote students ideas and suggestions through organizing regular activities and platforms to submit ideas (Surveys, Pannels)
- Encourage and Publicize service activities in the NIST community.
- Involve the Administrative team in meetings to discuss any concerns, plan events or express any thoughts from the student body.
- Encourage/increase the use of technology in various ways (VR for education, Testing new platforms to inform and involve the student body)
- Actively involve the NIST community, planning events to increase school spirit
-Promote transparency between the student council’s progression and the students/teachers.
From the very start of the year, with discussions as a friend group, we started critiquing aspects of the community that we wanted to slightly change and introduce things back such as Falcons news. We found that it wasn't the easiest to get our voices heard and therefore alluded to actually joining the Student Council Committee. Although at the time, I thought it was extremely unrealistic and unlikely to happen, we began to discuss more and more and before we knew it attempted to set smaller goals to build up to this role. Afterward, I individually started noticing aspects of our school that I thought could be improved and came towards the points of transparency and allowing our voices to be heard. I developed a list of things that I wanted to achieve that could potentially build my campaign towards the end of the year. Therefore, throughout the year, upon reflecting and noticing the schools stance, I slowly become more passionate as I consolidated my ideas and visions for what I wanted to see the school. I had a genuine interest in seeing the school improve and was motivated to be part of it.
After working hard to create a speech that was concise yet informative and humorous, I worked even harder to develop my presentation skills so that the presentation could be developed in a way that sounded genuine, exciting and engaging for the audience. The speech is arguably the deciding factor for most students and therefore I needed to ensure that my content and delivery was perfect. Upon practicing for days, the day of the elections was finally here. Upon taking a deep breath before picking up the microphone and speaking in front of the largest audience I ever had, I was greeted with the laughter and claps of the student body after completing my speech with the perfect amount of intonation and power as planned. After deep reflection, I was proud of my successful development throughout the entire process that has allowed me to personally grow in my engagement in the community, ability to lead, ability to speak, ability to campaign and ability to persevere. Regardless of the outcome, I was self-assured that I did the best I could do and that the other 4 candidates delivered exceptional speeches.
At the very end of the day, an email was sent to the entire student body, and I was surprised by the congratulations of all previous student council members that announced I was the next Vice President for 2018 to 2019 Academic school year. I was proud to receive recognition for my personal ideas and passions that the student body agreed with it as well. If it were not for my significant improvement in my public speaking skills that allowed me to focus on all aspects of the content,
delivery and synthesizing of my thoughts, it is highly likely that the result of the elected candidate at the end of the day would be different.
