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NeciFiX

Kung Fu Fighting!
Has anyone here ever done mini speeches or talks or speeches on CPs? I did once last year for a project, I believe I did it on the ICPS, the conservation part about the ICPS, since the theme was for animal rights/protection and habitat destruction (and we all know CPs are suffering huge amounts of habitat destruction).

Here's my story.

I had been growing CPs for several months then, and I read many days and nights about plants and was concerned about their environmental status. When we received the notice for a project on conservation and such, I immediately thought of the ICPS. I wrote down on the slip what I wanted to do, my teacher just rolled her eyes and smiled since she knew how much I was into carnivorous plants, and let me do it.

I forgot about the whole dang thing.

A month later in a Speech class out of nowhere we are going to present them. I have no notecard. I hadn't thought of ANYTHING to say, and I only looked deep into the conservation part of the ICPS and endangerment of CPs for a few days in class in the very beginning. No notecard, no planned speech. I was debating with myself whether to stand up and give the speech, do I say "Ermmm... um... scary Gothic liver eating teacher lady... I uh... don't have my speech." and go off with an F and a missing spinal column? Or do I stand up there, pure red faced, stuttering, teetering and uming for 10 minutes.

I chose the latter. I spent so much time debating with myself I didn't use the precious few minutes of time I had while girls were talking about saving the Pandas and Whales to prepare myself. In fact, I just spouted out an answer to my name and whether I was ready or not. I could not make the speech up, and I would certainly fail the class.

"Y-yes..." I muttered as I stumbled and clomped up to the front of the class. I looked around and my teacher stared at me and then spoke again.
"I need your sheet."
"O-Oh..." I said, stumbling back to my desk, jaw shaking, as I brought it to her.
"Do you have a notecard?"
"N-N-No..."
"Don't you need a note card?!"

"No, she said we didn't need one, we could do it without one and it's extra credit without one." A fellow student called out.

"Well, I'll need the extra credit." I said to myself as my teacher gave the nod of "Go". All these prying eyes on me, just staring at me, just standing there, I had nothing to say, I just let go of all consciousness and just started spouting crap. Some of it probably wasn't even right, but, I do remember a lot of it being right (I'm pretty sure once I moved off of CP's of America and tried to get some outside of the Americas and Asia I got clouded up). I tried to start off with something capturing.

"E-Every d-d-day p-peat bogs with m-many carnivorous plants i-in them are be-being d-drained all o-o-over the w-w-world". I stuttered, but, I was very audible as my voice was high from all the shaking. I turned redder. I'm pretty sure I said some number that I read off the internet on some web page since somebody said, "Woah" to that out loud.

I nearly fell over and pissed myself, and at this point I probably looked like a mental patient in Rehab, but, I continued, I mentioned some really long names like how rare the plant "Sarracenia purpurea subspecies venosa variety burkii and it's even rarer form Sarracenia purpurea subspecies venosa variety burkii form leuteola is along with Sarracenia purpurea subspecies venosa variety montana, and Sarracenia oreophila... etc." (which made some people surprised at my long vocabulary, and probably the fact how drunk I was sounding as I said it). I mentioned Nepenthes like N. aristiolochiodes (I'm not a Nep guy so I usually said most of these plants were around Borneo and the tropics in Asia and such.) I described a few forms and the lack of fires sometimes endangering plants as brush grew over them, I mentioned the plight of Cephalotus.

I had a presentation totaling 7 minutes. I had only spoken a tiny fraction of what I was prepared to say until the teacher cut me off since it's only a 45 minute class. My teacher was very intrigued, and asked me if there was one that could eat Ben --- a particularly noisesome one --- I cited the fact that N. rajah has been documented to catch rats and I also remembered in Peter D'Amato's book "The Savage Garden" where the couple told him about the baby monkeys in the Nepenthes traps.

I got an A. I even got extra credit on being "well prepared" (LOL) and had a positive presence (as if falling over and nearly peeing on the floor is good presence lol). I got a lot of clapping and before I caught up to myself I was done. I was like "Huh... oh yeah, website." Since my consciousness came back and I stuttered "carnivorousplants.org" since we had to do that. I doubt anyone would visit any of these websites but, y'know, gotta be formal.

And that's my story. From that day on I am now known as "The Professor" (the drunken professor not ready to give speeches and giving information that was probably a little bit wrong here and there considering I was so nervous) I did a more constructed speech later on but it wasn't as intoxicated and I actually had notecards and I was cut off before I could really explain anything past 2 genus of plants (I had like, 10 or 15 written down lol) and most people were bored, even this time I brought a Sarracenia along.

Your story? That was fun to write! Or just comment on mine. I'd like that :).

Anyone else have any stories?
 
Obregon562 and I once did a CP talk for a elementary school class. We brought over a bunch of our plants for them to look at too.

Oh and if you haven't noticed I usually don't give alot of details. :)
 
No use being nervous. Pretend everyone is in their underwear. Or if you're like me, pretend YOUR in your underwear. I hope you remembered to wear underwear that day.

I hated giving speeches. Not because I couldn't do it; I just hated preparing those damned note cards that I never needed but was required to turn it anyway. And putting together a woks cited page? Gag me with a spoon!
 
I gave one in French last year, it went over quite well actually... We had to give a presentation completely in French on any topic we were interested in, and we were encouraged to bring stuff in to help the class understand what we were saying... a lot of people did food, one particularly memorable student ran down the entire first season of "Grey's Anatomy", and I did my carnivorous plants :) The professor was so intrigued (closet plant geek, who knew?) I ended up giving her one of my baby Ping offshoots. There were so many questions that the prof. even let me revert to English to answer some of them ;)

I do hate giving speeches though, even if I know what I'm talking about it's very nerve-wracking. I'm good with a couple of people, but anything over 6-7 I start to forget to breathe!!! It's not even that I'm consciously scared- seriously, what are they going to do? - I'm just tense to begin with and being in front of people seems to make it worse *shrugs*
 
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