Learning New Things

I hadn't uploaded this reflection before, so here it is.

August 30, 2013

Today we completed the first week of our third semester. The morning meeting was led by Chacho, who did an activity similar to one we had done last year. He made us randomly choose three pieces of paper, two with names of people from the MPC and one with a place. Once we had these papers, we had to start writing a story with both characters and the place. My story had to include Bert, the moon and myself. At the end of the morning meeting, we all read the first couple of lines of our story, I was really amazed at the creativity that all of my classmates. Just by the couple of lines that they read, I already wanted to hear the rest of their stories. I can’t wait to hear their stories once they are done with them.

Earlier during the week, we had to choose some topics that we wanted to learn more about, in order to improve our rhetoric. So we did a couple of exercises, which made me realize many things about myself. One of the exercises we did was practicing introducing ourselves and then giving an important message, but we also had to do all of this with the correct body language: standing up straight, not moving from side to side and not hiding our hands. We were divided into pairs, in order to practice this. I already knew that I have a hard time keeping serious, so it was hard to me to give an instruction and make my partner believe it. Well, after a couple of tries, I guess I convinced my partner because she said I did good. The next exercise was more of a challenge for me. I was used as an example to how to hold your space. So my classmates acted as my public, I was introduced, had to walk into the room and wait for all of my classmates to pay attention. The first couple of times it was so hard for me not to start laughing when I did this, but I had to try to look at every one and try to be natural until I had everyone’s attention. I learned that this is a very important thing to do when giving a speech. When I have had to give presentations, I usually start right off and don't really care if everyone’s paying attention.  I have to say, it does feel so much better when the public is paying attention. After holding my space, I had to introduce myself, explain what my talk was going to be about and give an important instruction. This is were I learned the most, I used to think I was good at public speaking, a little nervous, but good in general. And it was shocking to learn that I made a great mistake, once I started to talk I took a step back from the public. Well, apparently this is understood as fear of the public. I also learned that I have to improve with my pauses.

Our last activity of the day was watching the movie The Wall. I didn't really like the movie so much, and didn't really understand it either. Now that I think about it, I probably didn't like it because I didn't understand it. I think the movie was a bit abstract for me. Well, even if I didn't seem to catch the main message of the movie, I think I caught many of the smaller details of it. For example, the school seen as a factory or an assembly line. I grasped the meaning of the movie a bit more when we had the discussion with the rest of my classmates; it made me realize things that I seemed to miss that were important. Although, by the middle of the dialogue, I got distracted. I started thinking of how much potential the new comers have, they really seemed to grasp the meaning of the movie and were eager to share their ideas with the rest.