Speech: Why I Join Toastmaster Club
Hi, everyone, I am Vera. I grew up in Chongqing, a municipality in China, and came to Singapore 3 years ago. Now I am 24 years old. Am I the youngest one here? I got used to being the youngest and the tallest lady in almost every event. Tonight I will give a self-introduction and explain why I am here.
As a typical Chinese born from the “only one child policy”, my family put a lot of effort into cultivating me. Naturally, I became the kind of child who always gives peer pressure on others, from keeping myself in the top 3 since middle school, achieving a chemistry full score on the university entrance examination, to getting postgraduate non-interview eligibility, and now, I am still the youngest data scientist on the whole company. My confidence was extremely strong with the support of those attractive marks.
But something changed when I came to graduate school in Singapore, an English-spoken environment. Before I came here, I prepared for the IELTS test. it is a academic test, right? Naturally, I got 7. Some classmates in the postgraduate class asked me whether I studied English before when realizing I am not able to organize sentences to express my opinions. I would always tell them I got 7. But I still cannot hide the fact that my spoken English is poor, so I pull myself down to where I want to escape.
Have u experienced, every time ur message can only reply Yes, Okay, but cannot find other words? How can I survive if ur listening to a group of local discussion, just like bees are wowowow, or You are struggling for over 2 hrs to write an appropriate email to reply to a short question? Those experiences destroyed my confidence, to the level where I realized I am not able to change it or rebuild it.
I wanted to escape it a lot, back to the time when I was one who others admired, always at the center of groups. Can I escape it? Can I speak Chinese to everyone I meet? How can I re-become that confident one? The method or solution I used before, for any exam, code debugging to project organization, cannot change this situation. It is like it is out of self-control. This is a gap, after close to 1 year of struggle, I finally admit it and confirmed that English is my shortage. It should be improved. Learning a language is a specific path. Now I am still on this path. so the first reason why I am standing here, improve the English.
Once I realized it, further thought is that life cannot be measured by not a countable achievement, from the rank I am holding on to, the number of AI features I developed, to the amount of my stock share. I prefer to think that it is this moment, I can give a speech, and you guys, enjoy this time staying here. I hope you guys enjoy it, life is more important than the result that you guys listened to a speech derived by Vera.
Naturally, I should add something interesting to my life or other people’s time. I chose the one that I dreamed of, public speech. Honestly, being able to give a speech on this stage, in front of you, is not just about being nervous, but also exciting and self-satisfactory, in other words, it is a cool and collected presence in front of an audience. Conversely, I hope it may be able to excite and enliven your guys who are experiencing a similar situation now.
Finally, after staying here for 3 years, I dare to go to improve my shortage – English, pursue a speech time and shift my life faith on numbers. What will happen in the next 3 years? Let’s see it
Thanks, everyone!
