I know I probably don't have many people who see things the same way I do, but I really enjoy making speeches. I felt very comfortable up there, and I made all of the points I wanted to make. One of the most difficult parts about my speech was getting my message across in under 7 minutes. It is an extremely complex issue that I had to make simple. I had to cut quite a few important pieces of information out because of the time limit, most notably my opinion that these factories are far from perfect and there are certainly things that need to be addressed with them. Maybe I will address what I had to edit out next speech. :-)
I was a bit disappointed when I finished because I had about a minute left until the 7 minute 30 second limit. I could've used that time to expand on what I feel to be one of the most important issues regarding these factories, the children. While I would absolutely prefer these children being in school, I think it was important to communicate the reality of their choices. Their choice is not work or school, their choice is work or starve. It's difficult for most Americans to understand poverty at the levels it is seen at some of the poorer countries around the world, so I was very glad to find the photo I used in my powerpoint of the Smokey Mountain trash dump in Manilla. These children don't go there to scavenge for food, they live there, that dump is their lifeline.
Overall, I think I did pretty good job of taking years of research and putting it into a 7 minute speech. I know I came across as somebody who has been looking into this issue for quite a while, but I am not sure if I came across as being condescending of the critics of these factories, which I do not want to communicate. I know most critics of these factories genuinely believe they are acting in the best interests of the workers, so I don't want to ever attack them, I know their heart is in the right spot ... I want to attack their argument. This is obviously an extremely important topic to me, my wife's family in Thailand is extremely poor. But I tried my best to keep my personal emotions out of my speech and just deliver the facts, and I don't know if I was successful or not. I think some emotion was mandatory to get my message across, such as when I made a comment along the lines of thank God the children aren't in the factory, while motioning towards the children living in the trash dump to survive ... but too much emotion would work against me. Based on some of the comments made to me by my classmates, I think I used to right amount of emotion. At the end of the day though, I was happy with my speech ... and I'm really looking forward to my persuasive speech, any guesses on what my topic will be? :-)
Finally, I want to say, I thought a lot of you (my classmates) did a great job. Many of the topics were about something I had absolutely no clue about, for example, the Urban Outfitters controversies or the Birthright trip. I knew Urban Outfitters was a clothing store, but not much else ... and I have never heard of Birthright before, which is odd because half of my extended family is Jewish. So it was fun to learn so much from all of your speeches. Thank you.
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