February 20th Meeting

Our International Speech contest club level was this Tuesday. Brian was the chairman of the contest, and gave us information about what happens at a contest. Everyone received a judging sheet with the criteria for the speeches. Each person was to fill out their sheet and hand the bottom piece into the ballot counters. He also handed out the evaluation contest sheet, where everyone was to judge the evaluators on their content.
Our contest speaker was Dave, who gave his speech half the man I used to be. He came in wearing the clothes he used to wear at 450 pounds, and said there is a person here missing today. He was quite glad this person is gone and assured us he would never be found again, because Dave got rid of him. Dave then announced that he is now below half the weight he used to be. Seven years ago, Dave decided that his hip was hurting so much that he was going to have to do something about it. After meeting with a doctor, he was told he needed to loose over 100 pounds before they could do surgery on his hip safely. While Dave tried to loose weight, he was not close to his goal by the end of the first year. Meeting the doctor again, he was referred to a weight loss clinic where they required him to loose more weight to prove that he would continue on his journey of weight loss if he got the gastric bypass. At the end of his speech he said that today he was shedding his old clothes, and life a butterfly bursting from it cocoon, Dave has been transformed into a new person.

Tom was our test speaker for our evaluators Dave and Avital, as shown in the video above. To end the meeting, everyone practiced filling out their judging slips, and how people were scored.