Behind the spotlight
- Aoyumi Jung
- Dec 3, 2019
- 6 min read
Hello December. 03.12.2019
"A thousand-mile journey begins with a little step" - Lao Tzu.
This is not about sharing what I shared, but it is about the feelings of being on and behind the spotlight.
Moments of time limit pressure
The art of going straight to the point is practiced in cases of time limit. It has been 4 months at GSSE but the times that I presented astonishingly tripled the total times in 3 years earlier. I tried "short pitch" to buy people in my debate team with the topic "Should military service be mandatory for everyone?" It took me 15 minutes to draft a persuasive performance that pointed out some hidden benefits of the army people should know. I got a team accordingly. It was a fun experience, I look forward to try the "improvised style" which requires quick mind to adjust to contexts. Whatever presentation types need a concrete message in the end. Going around is more of distracting the content than making up the colors. This is what I learnt from 2 learning experience. One is my effort to produce an Op-Ed essay about social media regulation, the other is the Cultural Cluster in the Academic Writing lesson. As a Vietnamese, the cultural background enormously shaped the way I express a point which majorly comes as a circle.
Stunning moments that knocked fear out
There is a process of turning dreams into reality, turning fear into faith. This process is like a passenger that has to take different platforms to reach destinations. It's just these platforms are not in a scientific order in the entire journey. Between each platform, the environment exposes humans with unexpected substances in the space that can lose our control ability at any cost. Whether passengers could arrive the destinations depends on the goals they set in the first place. No goal, no arriving point. It is just a sight-seeing trip without any idea of what's next. Be aware to see the difference in the intention of planning here! Having no intention to learn is different from having an open mind to accept and embrace everything. Some people are energetic on stage but behave negatively behind the spotlight. Why is it the case? It is the attention people give them on stage that they get the energy to express and talk confidently. Attention is the source of energy. This is what I learn from School of Gumption.
And perhaps, thanks to that intention, I survived in the most scary reality, but also a beautiful dream. It happened during the time I participated in YSI SEA Innovation Program in Singapore. Our ultimate goal was to present our ideas working through 5 months in front of big investors to get funding. I was never in the list of potential presenters, due to my shortcoming. After 4 intensive days with my team, Flora said I might be a more suitable pitcher than Houng because I am Vietnamese who went through the problems of Vietnamese people. I was surprised and did not answer the request yet. I was very scared. Shud came and asked me “Can I do it?” I said hesitantly “Yes”. Of course, at that time, I was way less confident at public speaking than now, I must say the moment I shined on that huge stage was the most shameless moment in my life. It was both embarrassing, and proud. I made it, after a sleepless night with fear. The pitching minute was still vivid in my head, unfortunately, I don’t dare to re-watch my speech. I just knew that I was really in a flow, I was fearless to be on the spotlight in Demo Day at the fabulous Marina Bay Convention Center. Thanks for the trust of my teammate and my mentor. They never said that I was not capable. They offered, and as long as they got the answer from me, they agreed upon it, and supported me till the end.
“You don’t have to be everything. You don’t have to be the best artist in the world. Remember the museum scene, an experienced person in art would say this picture is childish while one with little knowledge about art would say this is beautiful or Picasso’s products are shit. The thing which are new and irrelevant would always be the most interesting thing.” Hannah –
Moment of honesty, pride and hope
Mekong Delta WWF conference at BKK, 2019
Many times, the importance of practice and encouragement I remember 2 most stunning complements that is my sharing was honest and straightforward. I was able to convey a message clearly within the time duration. Each person shares different perspectives from their area of work ranging from investors, government, development organizations, bank, UNDP, researchers,... It was all worth! I tried hard since the beginning, brainstormed, consulted my team, my advisers and friends. Although there was not enough time to express an ASK for Lens on Mekong, I gave the reasons why I came to the Conference.
The WWF team was super aligned and high in energy, transcending emotional resilience and encouragement to me till the last moment. Based on the definition of attention above, I believed the contributing to my well-said messages at WWF was gratefully because of the attention people over the stage given to me with positive energy. Youths are not left behind. Youths are being treasured and empowered widely. Youths might be resource-less to ignite their potentials, but there are such nice humans in this world bringing wonderful opportunities for youths, and respect us equally.
Humans of SGS Project
I am not good at doing improvised speech at all. My mind easily goes blank if I don’t prepare anything in advance. This is my real weakness that I need to conquer it. Conquer by gathering more insights and takeaways. In case of sharing the thing that started from a personal cause, my mouth does not really freeze. Many of my friends in class are good at using English as a native for their educational background, I am still on the running path towards the goal of using a language naturally. I am proud of what I have. For this reason, the words could come out with not much thinking process when presenting our Humans of SGS project (my turn), which is different from the previous presentation regarding “Agenticity”. What city? [laugh] It was a topic I learnt at Critical Thinking Course at GSSE.
Interesting presenting assignments
- Critical Thinking (Conspiracy Theory and Pyramid Scheme – a fraud strategy to get rich)
- Thailand, ASEAN and The World (Thai Historical Movie and global influence)
- Culture and Self (Kpop and its influence in Thai culture)
- The Foundation of Social Innovation (SI case study and an idea of a future class prototype)
- Academic Writing (How to conclude?)
- Upcoming final one (of the 1st semester!) (A story about my first childish relationship)
As such, it is not of easiness to come on board without researching and practicing talking about new knowledge. The difficult part is how to relate the new knowledge with our personal life to engage the audience, and ourselves to the presentation. Thus although our speech might sound smooth and well-prepared, it has little thing associated with real experience and engagement. Of course, it depends on the type of speech like informative or persuasive, yet knowledge is created by another accumulating journey behind and it can’t be fully understood through short articulation and reading. It is just the way we interpret knowledge. It can be our so-call “understanding”.
Moment of sincerity and joy
Persuasive speech of Understanding Human Communication Course
Pay attention to the details. This is the latest public speech that I have. As usual, I spent times to practice and record my voice, only this time I had some stronger hope into the speech as the topic was something I spent hours to brainstorm, research, and later to consult my friend the content and approach of delivery.
The practice night was good until the reality screwed up. I came to ask for feedback from Ajarn. He said that usually we tend to forget around 25% of the original one, which is a good sign. Otherwise, we will just read the thing we learn by heart formerly. In fact, the in-it-“flaw” allows us to be flexible and improvise the story. It was awkward at some point to forget the script, yet it then became a highlight of the performance. This is the lesson I learnt from this hopeful speech, whose topic I chose 4 months ago and intentionally picked number 17 to present in December (as the last batch) to gather more detailed observation.
At the end of the day, it's all about observations and practice.
P/s. It was such a destiny that my sudden metaphor related to the train suddenly appeared in the book:
“A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later. But I suppose I ought to begin this tale with the same thing that ends it.” – Khaled Hosseini (And the Mountains Echoed)
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