Show and Tell

In an effort to try and stay ahead of my six classes of work for this semester, I have been trying to knock off each assignment as it comes rather than wait on a deadline to approach. To try and continue this habit, I'm going to work out the rough draft/bulletpoints of a show and tell presentation I need to give for my theater class. For this assignment, I need to take an item that is significant to me and talk about it for a couple of minutes in front of the class. I pretty much hate talking in front of a group, but I really need the gen-ed credits, so I need to do well on this. So, without further ado, I will now talk about something that means a lot to me. *This is basically what I'm going to try and stick to as far as the presentation goes.*

So, I really hate talking in front of people. Seriously. Hate it. Anyways, about three years ago I started taking karate classes basically so I could get out of the house and do something different. I had been at it for about a year and a half before I went to my first tournament, where in the performance (kata) category, I messed up majorly. It was an incredibly awkward and embarrassing experience which pretty much cemented the fact that I hate having people stare at me/judge me. It took me about a year to go to another tournament where I did  little better, but still placed in the middle of the pack. I think I did another after that, where I finally cracked the top two in the performance category, but still didn't make it to the top. Last October, though, I competed in another tournament, and for the first time I was the only one representing my school. I had worked hard to try to perfect a kata with a weapon that resembled a boat oar, and I felt like I had largely accomplished this. The weapons performance was first, and I ended up panicking and messing up. This effectively killed my momentum and I was pretty much resigned afterwards to leave, not competing in the empty hand performance category. I ended up staying, though, and the division I had for the empty hand category was nine people ranging from 17-39. Since I figured I had nothing to lose, I switched up my kata and did something that I hadn't practiced or prepared. I figured, why not? This couldn't get any worse. I ended up running this kata like a crazy person, yelling, kicking, beating the crap out of myself. When I was called back for my scores, I ended up being the only person who all three judges ranked in the 9-9.5 category; everyone else had at least one judge score them in the 8 range. Long story short, I won the division and the trophy. This trophy isn't that special as far as value goes; it looks like it probably cost about 5 dollars and is mainly made of shiny plastic. I don't care though. To me, this trophy means that I was the best on that day. It also means that incredibly shy, awkward, wallflower me is able to do stuff that I myself would never have thought of ever doing, and even succeed at them. This was the last tournament that I have been to for a while, but the memory of winning has me fired up for the next one.

I'll likely stick to this story in this style of presentation, with the exception of a lot of "ums," awkward laughter, and hurried talking.