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[This post was written by Kyle.]

As the sun rose to the east, Nicole took to the podium as the Toastmaster of our third 2015 meeting with “no doubt” in her mind about the quality of speeches she was introducing. As usual, our speakers delivered speeches on a wide array of topics, with “No Doubt” as the meeting’s theme.

A new member, Nancy, broke the ice on the cold winter day with her first speech, “From Sunset to Sunrise.” She described her journey between the sunset toastmasters club to sunrise toastmasters club enlightening us along the way of debilitating fears she faced on her path to becoming a public speaker and more. As part of her speech, Nancy quoted a Buddhist writer, “When we are willing to be in the discomfort, more things begin to shift.”

Up next, Aleli gave her speech, “Cleaning a Terrible Mess,” sharing her vivid biohazard cleaning experience to remind us of the positives to some of our bad experiences. Even “if you do make a terrible mess, it can always be cleaned up.”

Katey completed her tenth speech sharing her fears of venturing out of her neighborhood as a child. She explained how Sesame Street unconsciously tells us that everything we need is right in our neighborhood, while Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood made a clear distinction between our realistic and imaginary worlds. She reminded us of how many people around us tell us we don’t need to go out into the world, that we should be happy where we are.

In her speech “Take the Road Less Traveled,” she shared her wild experiences of traveling the world and riding horses in Dubai. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled. And that has made all the difference,” she quoted Robert Frost.

Junlei finished the speeches by taking on the character of a program director “accepting” an award for her work with distressed homeowners. She kindly thanked her supervisors for the exciting, challenging and meaningful project.

The most meaningful part of her involvement was when she could look into the eyes of those struggling with foreclosure and provide them a resource that could help them. In her acceptance speech, Junlei delivered hope, empowerment and strength.

Mark was up next taking table topics to Mt. Everest’s peak in terms of unexpected difficulty. Each randomly selected member from the group was to take on a character and scenario that he provided, such as Sherlock Holmes or a hypnotist, and provide a 60-second impromtu response.

In reference to the upcoming Super Bowl match between the Seahawks and Patriots and the “Deflategate” scandal, yours truly was called on to weave the phrases “Tom Brady,” Richard Sherman, and “Underinflated balls” into a 60-second response.

I mangled some ugly answer together, since the last football game I watched was the 2014 Super Bowl. It was overwhelming but an awesome challenge that taught me to find the strengths in the story I could grip onto instead of trying to weave in each part equally.

Our group of evaluators — Michelle, Marti, Mary, and Rich — took to the podium to provide detailed feedback about the speeches. Steve took a few minutes to provide a general overview on the quality of the meeting. Marti walked away with the Best Evaluator ribbon for her evaluation.

This is the last meeting the speakers will have before the speaking competition coming up on February 7. I have no doubt that the growing club and quality of speeches and feedback will make this event yet another intense but positive experience for all.

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