{"id":394,"date":"2017-08-31T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/?p=394"},"modified":"2017-08-31T11:09:12","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T15:09:12","slug":"why-i-am-a-toastmaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/why-i-am-a-toastmaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I am a Toastmaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Five years ago this week, after a lot of research and with a heap of trepidation, I visited Old Bridge Toastmasters for the first time. I felt a little awkward going to something where I didn\u2019t know anyone, but the people were friendly enough.<\/p>\n

They had this interesting program where you could earn awards for completing different sets of tasks. It appealed to me as a nerd, but there was no way I would ever be able to summon the courage to do all of this. 40 speeches? I couldn\u2019t possibly have that much to say. Be a club officer? Maybe one day, I could build up the courage to run for Sergeant at Arms. Serve as a district officer? Terrifying! Mentor someone? I have nothing to offer anyone, I thought.<\/p>\n

And yet, when we had an open house two months later<\/span>, I offered to be the guinea pig and give my first speech. When it came time to elect officers, I took a deep breath and ran for Vice President of Education. As my confidence grew, I took on more. Metaphorically speaking, a crawl became a walk became a run.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Five years later<\/span>, I\u2019ve given many presentations (some good, some not so good), taken on a variety of progressively challenging leadership roles, mentored a few members both formally and informally, helped with more speech contests than I care to count, and joined two more clubs along the way.<\/p>\n

The question I sometimes ask myself: Why am I still a Toastmaster? Why do I spend so much of my free time on this? I have at least a meeting a week, and that doesn\u2019t even begin to include time spent on leadership activities. This is also the first weekend in over a month that I don\u2019t have something on my schedule. (That\u2019s not an invite to put something on my plate!) I like to joke that this is my unpaid part time job and that hobbies are those things I used to have before I became a Toastmaster.<\/p>\n

I think I got my answer last night at Old Bridge Toastmasters. Everyone else on the club exec board this year joined after I did, and they are off to good start. I remember the first time everyone on the main speaking agenda spoke: they\u2019re all Competent Communicators now. In fact, I mentored two of the speakers when they first started. When I left the church where we meet, five of my fellow members were still happily chatting in the parking lot. It was 9:50 pm<\/span>, half an hour after our meeting had ended. Five people who would have never met or become friends, if not for a sincere desire to improve themselves and a commitment to help each other get there.<\/p>\n

And I thought to myself in a sudden and unexpected burst of emotion, \u201cI helped build this.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why do I do this? Because there\u2019s nothing more self-empowering than the knowledge you\u2019ve helped empower others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five years ago this week, after a lot of research and with a heap of trepidation, I visited Old Bridge Toastmasters for the first time. I felt a little awkward going to something where I didn\u2019t know anyone, but the people were friendly enough. They had this interesting program where you could earn awards for … Continue reading “Why I am a Toastmaster”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,177,85,50],"tags":[71,94,125,182,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tm83.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}