3/20/2008 - 3rd Place - My first time to speak in front of more than 50 people!
This is the area speech contest after qualifying for 2nd place in the Pioneer in-house speech contest. Please leave constructive comments for improvement.
Transcript: ----- "Average Joe"
Who can still remember their last graduation? Do you still remember the speech that was given?
Personally, for every graduation ceremony since middle school, I hated the speeches by the famous guest speakers. It's obvious! Yes, of course they were long, and they were boring. Believe me, after 17 years of studying, all I ever wanted to do was get out of school and be done with homework.
Madame Contest Chair, fellow toastmasters and welcome guests. For tonight I want to present another reason why I hated these speeches. But it is with this reason that I would want to deliver my very own speech to a graduating batch of students. If this is weird, allow me to explain.
In a developing country like the Philippines, invited speakers are often politicians or famous businessmen that have somehow shaped the country in one way or another. Coincidentally, their life stories all had the same pattern: they started from simple or even miserable beginnings, to ending up with vast amounts of wealth and influence. They said that this transition was simply possible through hard work. This was their plain and simple message.
This was very typical of enterprising Chinese immigrants that came to the Philippines maybe one or two generations ago. I'm Chinese, I should know. The eldest males had ten or maybe even more family members to support and educate. They collected scrap metal or valuable garbage then resold them to earn money. Or if possible they even worked three jobs all at the same time. Life was hard and painful. But they did everything they could to survive. Fast forward, twenty, thirty years to the present, they are out of their sad state. They were no longer poor. They now had family dynasties worth millions today.
Therefore, the message that came to each of us graduating was clear: all of us had the same ability to be rich beyond our dreams. It didn't matter if you came from a poor family, or if you were deprived of a top class education. All of this was possible with just plenty, plenty of hard work...
Me? Were they referring to someone as young and as foolish as me? I had a roof on my head and food to eat six times a day. I had a Play Station to keep me busy. I had to chat on the internet. Did they really expect me to drop everything, take three jobs and go through garbage right now? I didn't think so.
Jokes aside, my fellow toastmasters, this is the true character of the audience. This is the simple matter of a graduating batch of kids that couldn't relate with a speaker of simple beginnings. These were the stories of our fathers. Hard work is indeed very important. These politicians and businessmen used themselves as examples of how someone from the lowest possible state of life could still manage to be rich and famous. Because if they could do it, what more for the rest of us in this generation that were blessed with good families and comfortable lifestyles?
But we never learned to work as hard as they did. From a young age they learned to take life seriously, when we had yet to take it seriously at all.
I would like to think that students in the future would not differ much from today's typical kid. So when it is my turn to speak at that lectern in front of a graduating batch of students, I would like to be able to show that I started as an average kid very much like they are now. I had grades of Cs and maybe one or two Ds. I had a few friends but I didn't have much of a professional network to speak of. I was a computer programmer, a nerd, with basic social skills, and I didn't have a business of my own. How was I to achieve my dreams when I once realized them?
Personally I have yet to find a "solution" to being average in my own eyes. But I know that I will find it soon. When the time comes I would like to be able to look back and say that an average Joe like me could overcome myself: because I made very difficult personal changes, I believed in myself to go further, but most importantly because I made a lot of good friends that completed me where I lacked.
So far, I think I'm doing pretty well. Two years ago, never could I have ever imagined that I would be here in Tokyo now, freezing my rear in winter, talking to international audience of friends. But I'm still pretty average. Admittedly I still have a long, long way to go. But hey, I can make killer pasta!
So there you have it, my fellow toastmasters. I want to thank you all for listening. This speech is still far from being a graduation speech. But I hope that I wasn't long, and I definitely hope that I was not boring.
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Oh..another one of those Youtube videos !
mybluebelly 1 year ago
excellent speech...chuck The "problem" was (is) Your not average to begin with...
wevetra13 3 years ago