Ted Talk Reflection

 William McConico

12/18/23

2nd Hour

Ted Talk Reflection

What I Knew

I knew going into this topic that listening is a skill, and that muscle memory is how we as humans get better at the various tasks that we do. In knowing this, I believed that these two things would be fairly simple to connect back to the overall idea of repetition. While brainstorming, I also thought of the relationship aspect of repetition, and knew that I had a topic that I could talk about for a while.

Why I Selected This Topic

I selected this topic as repetition, and more importantly the listening and memory parts, are things that I struggle with and have been struggling with greatly for most of my life. I believed that if I did research on it and did a presentation on a topic that is pretty close to  my heart, I could not only better the audience, but also myself. I also selected this topic as I wanted to talk about the story with my sister, and I wanted to talk about fighting games. It is a weird connection, but I thought that this was the best way to accomplish both of those goals.

What I Learned-Research

The rewarding part of my research was that this is a fairly popular topic of research in the last couple of years, so there was a lot of information for most of what I was looking for. The source I liked the most was the one by Alexandro Nichols from Tennessee State University, stating that ``Muscle Memory refers to any voluntary movement that is learned and becomes automatic through constant repetition (i.e., walking, talking, writing, etc.). As a result, such movements become more accurate and efficient over a period of time.” This was a perfect quote, and the whole essay was very useful to my argument overall. The worst and most frustrating part of my research though, was looking for research on repetition  in relationships. Most of the stuff that came up was about dates and sex, and this was definitely not what I wanted to talk about in my speech. If I was to do this project again, I would definitely use my class time better, and I also definitely wouldn’t procrastinate at home, as I did most of my research while I was crafting my speech. This made the research far more stressful than it had to be.

What I Learned-Presentations

What I learned in the presentation process is funnily enough what I presented about:practice, practice, practice! When I practiced twice the night before and once the day of, my time kept coming out at about 8:30, which I was satisfied with as the required time was 8-10 minutes. I always struggle with talking too fast in general, but this is especially a problem during presentations, as it makes it much harder to hear me properly. I thought this thirty second cushion was enough, but I was sorely mistaken, as I finished at a whopping 7:30! After I finished, I realized that I didn’t read off some of my quotes, and I skipped whole sections of my speech, as after a certain point I put the paper down and went no notes. This was a good thing, as when I went no notes, I flowed better and talked slower, but if I would have practiced more I would have remembered to include more of that in my speech. In the future I need to practice more and I need to slow down.

What The Audience Learned

My goal in this speech was to get the audience to take the action of incorporating more repetition into their lives, in order to better their memory, their skills, and their relationships. In life, I believe that if you can impact just one person, what you did was worthwhile. I can tell by looking at the audience that they truly cared about what I had to say, and that they could see how easy what I was asking of them was. If one of those audience members decides to write something their mom says down, or practices shooting on the basketball court one more time, or even just listens to a song again to understand the lyrics better, I feel like I have done my job.

Advice To Future Students

My advice to future students is to do what Mr. Davidson asks when he asks it! I was on Kairos when they were working on the project, so when I got back, I had to cram the whole project into one night, giving me little time to practice or truly improve my speech. So please, do the work in class and don’t procrastinate, as this is a massive assignment that is worth divulging your time and mental resources into.