In Valerie’s last blog post, “Our Mentors Advocating for The PCC at the Welcome Back Event!”, she spoke about the importance of advocacy across the Communication Studies Department, as well as within the PCC. Within our current political climate, advocacy has become a focus for many non-profits, community groups, and even individuals. Whether you choose to follow that inner advocate that we all have inside of us, or not, you are constantly advocating. How? By giving speeches.

Here at the PCC, we don’t just “help” students to perfect their speeches, rather we empower them with purpose. By giving your speech purpose, you can create change. You’ll find you become more excited about your speech by implementing some aspect of change, advocacy, importance, and/or substance to your speech.

I was once in a mentoring session, where my mentee showed me her introduction speech to the class. While her speech was great, in terms of direction, but she lacked purpose. As she showed me her PowerPoint and delivered her speech, I could tell she wasn’t excited. The one thing I did realize was that she loved animals, especially her own. After asking her a bunch of questions about herself, she mentioned that she had done a lot of volunteering for animals. A lightbulb went off. She realized that if she connected her volunteer work experience to her own animals, her speech would have purpose! We ended by talking about how she thought it was important that people volunteer, especially in the animal world. Here, what do we see? Advocacy!! She became enormously more excited just by adding that small purpose and advocacy to her speech. She later told me how much better she did on that speech than with the previous one! The power of advocating for something we believe in, we want to fight for, and what follows our personal values is so tremendous. Just by adding a little more personal purpose to your speech, you will amplify your love for public speaking.

Think you need help finding your inner voice and inner advocate? Make an appointment with one of our peer mentors to help you search for that purpose that will make your speech that much better!