This artifact is taken from my Fundamentals of Public Speaking course. The assignment was to give an interpretive speech, a speech in which we take the words of others and
put our own emotion into the reading. We were told that this speech could come in the form of poetry, a monologue, or an actual speech as long as we interpreted it with or emotions and followed the correct format.
At first, I was stumped as to what to choose. My first thought was to read a passage from Harry Potter, but since the main objective for this speech was to emote, I figured that that wouldn’t be enough, so I decided on a different route. Music has had a large impact on my life, from being my distraction from negativity to being a creative and positive outlet for emotion. Because of this powerful influence, I decided to read song lyrics that I could relate to in order to tap into my emotions. We were allowed to put multiple pieces of works together to get meet the timed speech minimum, but in order to do so there had to be a theme among the pieces. The theme I had decided on was depression, knowing that it would provoke some emotion in me. Though we were allowed to read from multiple pieces, I took a risk by not only using pieces from different artists, but cutting them up and stitching them back together in an order that would tell a singular story through the words and unique perceptions of different artists. For example, a portion of The Smith’s “Asleep” appears both before and after a section of Blink-182’s “Adam’s Song,” and “Adam’s Song” reappears at the end of the piece. I intertwined and weaved the song lyrics together, which wasn’t a method of performance that had been discussed by the professor. To read the piece, you can click here.
If I were to do this assignment again, I think the only thing I would change would be to allow myself to feel the emotions more when I actually performed it in front of the class. When I rehearsed it at home, I allowed myself more time read through and feel the words, even tearing up quite a bit. Once it came time to perform it in front of me peers, however, I let my nerves get the better of me and rushed through it, so the emotion didn’t show as much.
I think this artifact demonstrates my skills in creative thinking as required by the rubric.
For the Taking Risks category, I believe I meet the requirements for a score of four because of the risk I took in creating the assignment. As I mentioned previously, though we were allowed to read from multiple pieces for the purpose of time, there had been no mention of weaving different pieces together to make a singular work. There was also a risk of embarrassment, reading from a piece that would evoke more emotion from me than I would normally present to anyone, let alone a classroom full of peers. For the category Solving Problems, I would score myself with a three, the problem to be solved being what to read for this assignment, selecting from several options that were available, and the consistent plan to follow through on the creation of this piece. I would also score myself with a three for the categories Embracing Contradictions and Connecting, Synthesizing, and Transforming, because I was able to take different perspectives on the subject from different artists who were telling different stories, and turned them into one cohesive story. Along the same lines, I created a new format for the assignment, placing me at a three on the rubric for the category of Innovative Thinking.