i am writing about me

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I am Writing about Me
I have to acknowledge that I have grown significantly as an individual especially when it comes to communication skills. At the beginning of the semester, I was very shy and found it difficult to pass a message or even speak in front of a group of more than three leave alone a whole class, unless they were very close friends. This was due to the fact that I felt like the audience mostly concentrated mostly on me as a person instead of the message that I was trying to pass. This would affect me as I would panic and forget the message I was trying to say and sometimes found myself stammering. At the beginning of the semester, if I was given a presentation to do in front of the whole class, I would have passed no matter the consequences since standing in front of people to make my voice heard was my worst nightmare that I was not ready to go through.
As a result of being tensed, when forced to speak in front of people, I found another weakness being exposed that was my body language. In as much as my non-verbal skills are well developed, I found myself not being able to use them while communication to a group and most of the times would just use verbal communication. At first, I wasn’t aware of the weakness until I noticed when I speak over a short period people would get bored and decided to evaluate myself by asking some of my friends the reasons. The other challenges were maintaining eye contact with my audience. Due to my shy nature, I tended to avoid looking at the audience and most of the time I looked down, or at the materials, I was present or talking about.

At times when I became aware that I have to maintain contact, I subconsciously looked at one person or place making them uncomfortable.
During the semester, I decided to do something to improve my communication skills as I found it a necessity to my personal growth. I started doing research on how to develop them by talking to people starting with my friends. The research included talking to my friends and classmates to find out to where they think I was not doing well and what they would recommend helping me face the challenges. I also checked on my strengths in order to help me in dealing with the challenges. In order to learn more about my challenges and strengths, I decided to start contributing more in small groups for the purpose of gathering courage. This worked well since I found that with time, I could speak my thoughts during a discussion without even being forced by circumstances. I found that starting with a small group was helpful as I would be able to communicate effectively and respond to the questions without being tense and thus eliminating the problem of forgetting what I wanted to say.
Consequently, with the small group, I realized that when am communicating, I had to be sensitive as I would get direct feedback in case I said anything that is offensive. This prepared me for the big audience as I realized I had to think about what I want to say and if it might have an adverse impact on any of the participants. During these small groups, I also learned I had a weakness of having preconceived ideas and did not care what other people thought about the topic as long as I delivered my message. I learned it is important to empathize in order to avoid being attacked while in a larger group which would cause panic and affect my communication skills. Also to work on my shyness, I realized I had to work on my attitude. I started being positive and putting on a little smile while communicating in order to be friendly and make people feel comfortable and welcome to engage me and as well as disagree with me whenever they had a different opinion.
Simultaneously, the other important skill I have learned is that humor plays a very vital role in communication as laughing would help release stress and anxiety. I dared tried not to be too serious or too rigid while communicating and this helped me release tension and be able to communicate comfortably. I realized that I had improved when I was given 30 seconds to give a speech in front of 200 people. Unlike in the past when I would have gladly passed this chance even at the beginning of the semester, this time I was looking forward to it. Though I was a bit nervous, I was really looking forward to putting into practice what I have been learning about myself and gauge my improvement. I also asked a few friends to be among the audience in order to observe where I had improved and the areas that still needed improvement. The speech was like a test to me to know how far I have improved and what need to be done to overcome the challenges I was still facing.
For the first time, I felt like the speech was too short, but then I realized it was a chance to test how organized I was and how concise my message was to avoid wasting the audience’s time and communicate only what is necessary. The speech also helped me improve my courage from small groups that I was previously working with to larger crowd. After the speech, I noticed I had greatly improved as the challenge of forgetting my message was already gone. I walked in front of everyone and gave my speech, and the response was overwhelming unlike before where I could leave my audience gloomy even in small groups. After the speech, I was also courageous enough to speak to a few strangers to get feedbacks on how they felt I did in my speech. This was to help me get feedback from people who did not know that the speech was part of my test. Later I went to get the feedback from my friends and apart from a few areas I was to work on; they acknowledged that I had improved greatly. This encouraged me to participate more in larger groups’ presentations as they helped me apply what I have been working on.
As I stated earlier, at the beginning of the semester when I started this class, communicating in front of people especially strangers was a major challenge to me. This was regardless of the size of the group whether small or large. I also experienced the same challenge when it came to group work discussions. This class has helped me to transform from a very poor communicator to a very improved one or work in progress if I have to put it that way since I still feel I have a long way to go. The lessons learned in the class have helped me deal with the challenges that I already knew I had but didn’t know how to work on them. More ever, through tackling the challenge of being shy, I can now communicate easily whether to friends or strangers and also in groups. The course has also helped in learning some challenges that I did not know I had and helped in improving them. This is especially when it comes to the effective communication. I learned that I was concentrating on delivering the message without minding whether I was communicating effectively.
Contrarily, I realized that effective communication is essential in delivering the message otherwise my message would not be understood and therefore will not have the impact that I expected. During the semester I have also learned that most people if not all are also nervous at some point in delivering their speeches especially to a large group, but they know how to deal with them effectively. This has helped me acknowledging it as not my weakness as a person, but a challenged faced by others and had to find ways to overcome it.
In conclusion, comparing myself at the beginning of the semester and my current situation I would say I have made strides and am still learning to improve my personal development. I still feel that I have a lot to work on when it comes to larger groups of people. In order to grow in this sector, I have to practice more in participating in larger groups to be able to gather courage and avoid panicking.