Juniata College Bailey Oratorical Thoughts
I think that everybody did an amazing job in their speeches for the Bailey Oratorical 2022. To have the courage and confidence to go up there and give a speech like that in front of around 100 people is incredible. I know firsthand how nerve wracking giving those speeches are as I had to give one the day before, in the same room, for my Art of Public Speaking class. The nerves and butterflies are felt the worst just before you give your speech. I know the speakers that night were on edge as I had been sitting right next to them as a camera man for the live stream and spoke to a few of them. They stated how nervous they were, and I could see them breathing deeply and heavily. Through all that they still managed to give amazing, well structured, spoken, and well delivered speeches.
In my Art of public speaking class, the following day, we spoke about whether we agreed with the judges top 3 choices and almost the entire class of around 25 people stated that Alexa Cinque, who won third place and the people’s choice award, should’ve won first place. Many people stated that her speech was the easiest to follow and managed to persuade you that a child, who she spoke about, should be awarded Times Magazines 2021 Person of the year. Many agreed that her speech was the easiest to relate to as it was a story following the experiences of a child in certain situations which many of us could relate to at one point in our lives. Some saying, “I felt like she was just telling us a story and not a speech”. “I got lost in the story and totally forgot that this was a speech.” I totally agree with all these comments about Alexa’s speech, and I do believe that she had the best delivery out of all the speeches. But I can understand why the judges chose Megan O’Reilly as the winner. For starters she had the best hook. I know this because it was the first hook I, and many others, remembered. It was also the first time the audience laughed during the speeches. “Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror thought, hmm, yeah, I could really use a therapist.” ~ Megan O’Reilly. Her speech flowed so well from start to finish. But the main reason I believe the judges chose her, was because she made her speech about us, the audience, and not about herself or a particular person. She made her speech about mental health and in particular, anxiety disorder. With this being one of the three biggest mental health issues in America it is no wonder that many people could relate to her stories. Although she did choose one person, her therapist, as times 2021 person of the year, she managed to tie her reasoning for choosing her therapist to all of us. Making us feel the emotion behind her speech better.
I think Kayla Blackstock made good use of hand gestures during her speech. Using one hand to represent a person and the other hand to represent the other. She also had the best pacing of all the speech, speaking with a good rhythm and flow which made it easy to follow. Her downfall was the feeling of indecisiveness in her speech. On one hand she said that she believes that nobody should win Times 2021 person of the year, but then goes on to tell us how great Elon Musk is and all the reason who could win the award. Making us confused and conflicted. Ishiyihmie Burrell came in 2nd place and rightfully so. Ishiyihmie had the best argument and reasoning for his speech. His argument that only after black people die does change happen, was so powerful and meaningful to himself as you could hear the emotion. His arguments were structured in a sort of timeline order and proceeding in chronological order. This made it unconsciously easy to follow while absorbing all the meaningful information behind his words. I felt as though Kyle Louder had a more monotone voice. This made the speech difficult to stay engaged with. He also used the same hand gesture consistently during the speech making it less impactful. Compared to if he would use that gesture only on important points. Other than that, he had a great speech and deserved the finalist’s round.
All in all, I personally agreed with the judges’ choices for top 3. The only question I was pondering after the results was whether the results would change if the speakers delivered each other’s speeches? Which is more important, the delivery… or the content?
~ SUDS, 2022
