Christopher Leadership Graduation

Tonight was graduation night for my Christopher Leadership course.  It's a 10 week course that teaches leadership skills through public speaking.  For the first few weeks, I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue.  I kept wanting to drop out.  But I stayed and every week, I learned something new.  It has helped me tremendously.  Each week, there was a new theme to the class.  Courage, open-ness, unique-ness, love and community, enthusiasm, positive thinking, etc.

I struggled during the first few weeks but as the weeks went on, I got better and better.  At the graduation dinner tonight, each student had to do a final speech.  The requirement was that it had to be upbeat and positive.  In the past, my speech topics have included cooking seafood, the headaches of building a new home, and sharing french fries.  My final speech was on Justin Bieber.  I was worried that my peers would not know who Justin Bieber was - I asked one of the younger girls in the class whether they knew who Justin Bieber was and she said no.  At that point, I thought my speech was going to bomb.

When it was my turn to stand up and talk, I gave the best speech I've given so far.  There was no nervousness and I remembered everything that I wanted to say.  Several of my classmates told me that they thought I had the best speech of the night.  It was positive, upbeat, and the audience got a good laugh at it.  Who knew that a speech on Justin Bieber would have been my best speech.  :)

I can't wait for the second course.