Would you kill someone, if you knew it would save 10 people? How about if you had to press a button which would kill 100,000, but save a million? This was the key question I asked my classmates to convince them that the Manhattan Project is extremely historically significant. 

Hi everyone, and welcome back to my blog. we just completed our first project of grade 11. As you now know we studied the Manhattan Project (if you don’t know what that is refer to the link here). So for this project we had to write a speech. Now if you know me, you would know I’m not a quiet or shy person. I have no problem discussing topics in front of large groups of people, or presenting projects to my class. However I’ve never written or presented a true speech, and this meant I had a lot to learn. 

Writing a speech is not the same as writing a presentation or essay. It’s almost like a whole other form of writing. I’ve began to think of it as similar to poetry. You have to consider the weight of your language, how your speech will flow, and how your words will effect your tone. Considering all these elements really pushed me to become a better writer. The first big challenge I came across was my introduction. I needed a hook which could be tied into the conclusion, and invoked emotion in the audience. I would say I spent almost half the time on my speech just on my introduction. I knew it was the most important part. If I didn’t have a good introduction my whole speech was doomed for failure. 

I had to overcome another major obstacle during this project. I needed to slow down. Typically I speak very fast. Like a lot of people can’t keep up fast. Like a YouTube video played at 2x speed fast. This is terrible for a speech. If you speak this fast during a speech the audience wont be able to take anything in. Your words will hold no weight. While the recommended word count for our speech was 400 words for our 4 minute speech. I knew I would have to write more. Even if I slowed down my speaking as much as I could, I wouldn’t even come close to that time. So I decided I would speak as slow as I could and keep my speech to about 500 words. After refining my speech, I practiced, and practiced, and practiced. After an agonizing amount of slowing my speech down I got up to the 4 minute mark. It hurt my head to speak that slow, but I knew my speech was long enough. Until it was time to present. 

The final time for my speech was something like 3 minutes and 10 seconds. While its still not crazy far off the target time, it was way to fast. I failed on the time objective. But that’s fine. We all need a First Attempt In Learning. This was only my first real speech, and I know I can get better over time. In fact I want to get better. I know public speaking can be a huge asset in future careers and in general life. In our next project I will make sure to work even more on speaking at that mind numbingly slow rate. The most important thing I took away from this project wasn’t that the manhattan project is historically significant. But that I can and must continue to develop all my forms of communication.