I was reminded of one of my very first classes today as it was current event day in my marketing class. Once a week or so a few people must give a little presentation linking some news story with the things we've learned in class. It's not an overly involved presentation by any means. Of course I was still impressively amazed at just how bad some people are at speaking in front of a class. And it wasn't nervousness. Nervousness I can understand, I can have sympathy for them. These are the people that either don't care or just lacked he fundamental ability to speak convincingly on a subject. I've never heard so many "Uhm"s and "like"s in my entire existence. One girl stood at the front of the room, her leg crossed over the other, chewing non-chalantly on her gum and turning her head about to make her hair flow back and forth. It drove me insane. If you're presenting something to me, lose the gum and stand there like you know what the hell you're talking about.

The class this reminded me of was my very first speech com. class. I think it was 110 with Barbara Mack. This wasn't a class where we spoke to the class on anything or had to present things per se. It was actually a huge lecture hall of close to 400 people. Every class, however, she would ask questions and ask for input from people. The first few classes she'd listen to whatever you had to say and then politely tell you at the end how many times you said "like" or paused to say "uhm". After a week she'd actually stop you when you said one of these cursed words and make you begin again. The entire class caught on after awhile and so help a poor soul who decided to drop one of these words. The sad part is most people don't even realize they're doing it, and it's somewhat hard to stop. But for the sake of the professional world, if you're going to speak, try and at least make it seem as though you've visited a collegiate campus and perhaps have even heard someone of authority in a field speak about something, anything, once in your life.