Hello and welcome back to another amazing blog post! This is my final project in grade 12, which means this will also be my final blog post. As always, this will be a reflective post, and I’ll be discussing my Spring Exhibition Project 2024.

Introduction:

Are you a bookworm who reads every day? Well, I’m not, and I barely read any books. When I heard that our new project was a book study, my heart dropped. Not only are we reading different books, but they are all “self-help” books. You have to be a loser to navigate life through a book, I thought to myself. However, this thought quickly vanished as I read the first chapter of “How to Talk to Anyone” by Leil Lowndes.

We were offered several books to read. However, I was drawn to “How to Talk to Anyone” because I’m interested in enhancing my communication skills and becoming more effective in social interactions. I was uncertain whether it was a good decision or not, but after reading the introduction, I was hooked. The author stated that communication can get you anything you want in life, and by reading this book, you’re guaranteed to become a communication expert. At that time, this was extremely intriguing to me. As I continued reading, I kept the driving question in mind:

“What can we learn from authors about achieving personal and professional success?”

Due to our difficulties in keeping up with reading, we were asked to create a reading plan and strictly follow it to ensure we finished our books on time. Here is my reading plan for “How to Talk to Anyone”.

Book Review:

After spending some time reading this book, I realized that Leil’s communication techniques are very practical for everyday situations, so I decided to experiment with them. I set a goal for myself to execute at least one technique each day to improve my communication skills. By the time I finished the book, I had gone through most of the tips. I enjoyed how easy the book is to follow; it’s almost like a Lego manual. It’s a step-by-step guide that teaches you how to interact with people. Some techniques are weirdly specific and niche, while others are very general and could be used in any situation.

The book is divided into nine sections: how to introduce yourself, how to keep a conversation going, how to talk like a VIP, how to talk like an insider, how to sound alike, how to compliment, how to call people on the phone, how to party like a politician, and how to break the glass ceiling. Each of these sections targets a different group of readers, but together they form the character of a communication expert.

I posted a short review of the book on Goodreads if you are interested. Here is a more detailed version of my review:

Now that we’ve studied our books for a month, what is the final product of this project? As it turns out, we are the final products. We were divided into three groups based on the topics of our books and hosted a panel discussion about our books with a Comic-Con vibe. The moderator asked us different questions, and we tried to entertain the audience with interesting answers. My group’s topic was “Communications and Psychological Insights,” and my team consisted of Quinn Smig, Jakub, Erin, and Indy.

Core Competency(decision making🤷‍♂️):

We made decisions about what we wanted to discuss during our panel discussion and came up with some panel points. We then connected our individual panel points and developed questions for the moderator to ask. We decided to do lots of practice to make the discussion as smooth as possible and tried to dress up as our book authors.

Answer to the Driving Question:

During our collaboration, I noticed a common theme across all our books. The lessons the authors are trying to teach us come from the mistakes and experiences they’ve accumulated throughout their lives. Quinn’s book, “The Brave Athletes”, is written by Olympic medalists. Erin’s book, “Quiet”, is written by a person with a PhD in psychology. “How to Talk to Anyone” is written by a professional speaker who teaches communication skills. They are experts in their fields because they tried and dedicated their whole lives to it. The main lesson we can learn from the authors is that if you want to achieve something, you have to put in the blood and tears, whether it’s for personal or professional success. Nothing will change if you don’t seek different results, and picking up a self-improvement book is the first step.

Here is the final product from Exhibition Night:

Reflection:

Overall, I think this project went very well. The assignments were fairly simple, and our final product was as good as we had envisioned it. I do wish we had created some sort of artifact, as it would have been an amazing memory to look back on. However, the audience was satisfied, and so am I. I really want to say “next time I’ll…”, but there is no next time. 😭

Conclusion:

My five years in the PLP program have been a great journey. I’m very glad we ended with a group project where we could collaborate with our peers one last time. I will definitely miss the late-night grinds on assignments that are due the next morning, including this one.

Goodbye Seycove, and goodbye PLP. ❤️