A Toast About a Toast (2021-Dec-23)

Index of Journals

I was a guest at the ToastMasters Club meeting yet again. This time I also brought a friend, yes, you are right. Sakshi Dahiya. And here I am, making the same mistake again that I made at the meeting. That mistake is digressing.

The reason that I digressed during my Table Topics speech is that I thought I had fully understood the topic, but I did not process it to put a story around it. I did not take my 10 seconds of time to build the speech in my head.

When I started, I thought I had it in control and I was fluent and smooth but after only a couple of seconds (maybe 30), I had to ask the Table Topics master about the topic again. (And I have always thought that I am a great speaker. Am not. ToastMasters Club reminded me of that again.)

The table topic was: What's my perspective of ToastMasters and What benefits do I see of Toastmasters?

That is what I remember of the topic from the second time that I heard it.

While writing about it now, I barely think of it as a topic and think that it is more of a two-part question. A rather simple 'topic' if it is one.

I was very confident at first and then mayhem happened. I was in the middle of my speech, which had roughty taken 30 seconds and then I apologized for digressing and asked the Table Topics Master for my topic again.

Next when I started again I stayed stuck to the topics as I needed no introduction and the topic was more of a question.

In the speech, I said that it has become more of a cliche if you say "ToastMasters improves your communication skills" and then went on to mention that ToastMasters helps you build social network and in networking, which was why I was there.

A mistake I remember was calling ToastMasters members by their first names without prefixing with the words "toast master" as in "Toastmaster Samitha".

I hope I would learn something from this yet another "Guest" mode tint with ToastMasters club and the meeting ended with Toastmasters giving awards such as "Most Daring Guest" (a new thing I was seeing this time) to few guest members and then closing the meeting a pitch for membership to the guests.