Tuesday marks a decade that I’ve been involved in Toastmasters. I have made memories along the way as well as many friends in my Toastmasters travels. I’ve attended countless club officer trainings, also known as TLI, as well as District Conferences. I’ve heard countless keynote speakers, and attended countless breakout sessions where I learned a lot.
My home club will help me celebrate my ten year anniversary with Toastmasters Wednesday night. Our Vice President Education Chuck Dietz has added me to the agenda so that I am able to embellish a little bit on my decade in Toastmasters. Next year that torch will be handed to me and big things are expected of me and will happen.
Part of our normal Toastmasters agenda involves speakers and evaluators. In this upcoming blog, I’ll be giving three facts about my Toastmasters journey and two ways I can improve. I’ll close this blog with a challenge to myself for the new Toastmasters year.
I joined Greensburg Toastmasters on June 1, 2011. Soon after I gave my ice breaker speech. What inspired me to join Toastmasters?
I was still in a dark period in my life after college when I felt the need to get another undergraduate degree to make up for how mediocre (at the time) I felt my college experience went at Slippery Rock; (I’ve long since accepted my time there and felt it was the right place at the right time for me). My reasoning for joining Toastmasters has long since changed since starting the blog.
I also belong to the advanced Toastmasters club, Achievers. This is a club that has a round robin evaluation to go along with the regular evaluation portion of the meeting. I have also served as Club Coach for the McKeesport club. They become Distinguished and led me to get my Distinguished Toastmaster award in September 2019. I am also an unofficial member of the Cranberry High Noon club. So you see, I do make my way around the District.
In January of 2015, I served at event chair for the Winter TLI. What was the inspiration behind me taking on this endeavor?
Beacuse I was looking to complete my High Performance Leadership project requirement. I assembled a great team of workshop presenters, a Toastmaster, and Sergeant at Arms, and a Registration chair. She put together her own team to help get everyone signed up and ready for a great day of learning and growing as a leader in their club. Who inspired me to take on this project?
We had a great District Trio in 2014-15 led by District Governor Melissa McGavick, Lieutenant Governor of Education and Training Josue Batista, and Lieutenant Governor of Marketing Eric Schultz. These three have inspired me to go far in my Toastmasters journey and encouraged me to go after this endeavor.
The club officer training I put together was one of the best ever and it helped me achieve my Leadership Excellence credit. This counted towards my Advanced Leader Silver award (which I received in the summer of 2019) and eventually my Distinguished Toastmaster award that September.
I attended the final District 13 Fall Conference on the final weekend of October 2017. The District and Toastmasters International was phasing out the Fall event in order to focus more on growing clubs. We had a prolific keynote speaker in Reggie Ford and excellent training sessions and contests. It was a bittersweet weekend as we said goodbye to a longtime tradition.
What inspires me to attend these big events? It’s the opportunity to get to meet new people from other districts and learn more from their Toastmasters experience.
The 2013 Fall Conference was great for me because I accepted the award for Select Distinguished District from our past District Director Russell Drake. I served as District Sergeant at Arms from late 2012 until mid-2014 and my delivery was always spot on.
Also, because it’s fun to see your Toastmasters family. The Spring 2019 event was a comeback of sorts for me after I was down for most of the previous year. Getting together and socializing with other Toastmasters on Friday night and having a full day of learning and laughter Saturday made this worthwhile. You always find a great group to sit with at the dinner and celebrate what a great weekend it was.
Those are a few of the cold hard facts about my ten years in Toastmasters. Here’s some of things I can do better in the next year.
I want to be a better example to the club as the incoming Vice President Education. One way I can do that is by planning to give more speeches. Over my ten year Toastmasters journey and throughout life, I’ve spent a lot of time wallowing in self-doubt. That needs to come to an end. I’ve come a long way but I still have room for improvement.
It’s time to get serious about Pathways. I have paths in place but I’ve remained stagnant while others have earned education awards. I need to dust off my paths and work through them.
I have aspirations to be a future workshop presenter at TLI, or education chair at a future conference. The sky’s the limit. Taking my own feedback to heart could help me get there.
I need to become more confident in myself. One example of this self doubt came in January 2015, a few days before our Winter TLI that I was chairing. I worried that I wouldn’t have time to get everything ready on top of everything else going on. But it all worked out and I put together one of the best club officer trainings.
I need to accept a role with grace and not moan about it. The worst that can happen is that I come down with a case of “membertude”. We had an issue in Greensburg with one of our former members contracting a case of “membertude”. It got so bad that it almost cost our Club Coach an opportunity to get his Distinguished Toastmaster award.
So how will I challenge myself in 2021-22? I want to be a better steward of time management with Toastmasters, including my officer role, my job, and life in general. That’s what Toastmasters is for, right? I finally kicked the habit of being bogged down by other people’s drama. However, I want to eliminate any self-doubt I have so that I can perform my role effectively.
In ten years of Toastmasters, I’ve had great meetings and bad. I’ve been in meetings with four people and meetings with 24 people. I wanted to give up some days because things weren’t going good and other days I can’t stop talking about Toastmasters. I’ve attended awesome conferences and spectacular club officer trainings. After ten years, it’s been a good run and I want to continue with it. Looking forward to another great ride in 2021-22.
Bye everyone. ❤️ you.
Stylish 🍒 