This Saturday's meeting was chock-full of advice for the attendees. Our Toastmaster was Dudley. The theme -- Advantages of Having a "Rip and Read" file. I was the Table Topics master for the meeting and thought the theme was related to ripping DVDs to computers... boy was I wrong! Dudley explained that a rip and read file is a file containing articles we rip from a magazine or newspaper and file away to read later. This is useful for speech topic ideas and having conversation pieces.
Our two speakers for the day were Richard, a fairly new member to the club, and Jeff, a veteran Toastmaster. Both speakers added to Dudley's advice and gave us all some more tips to help with our speeches. Richard encouraged us all to speak up without worrying too much about having the perfectly prepared speech, because there's quality hidden in quantity.
Jeff told us about his "Constipated Brain" and how he plans to work through his writer's block. He encouraged us to carry a notebook so we always have something handy to write down any ideas that pop into our heads. He also suggested reading more effectively to feed our minds. For example, instead of reading book after book about vampires, throw in a nonfiction book such as The Way of The Seal by Mark Divine. His last bit of advice was to write a list of 10 ideas every day centered around a theme.
I always learn something at a Top of Texas meeting and this meeting was no exception!
Submitted by: Lina Choun
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