Videos

This is the video of the podcast from Modern Talk with Dre Gastion to promote his new unnamed project

This is a persuasive speech and I did it on why you should love Chance The Rapper. First, I want to get out of the way how I misspelled “Chancelor” on the board behind me. I was so focused on doing only one “l” that I forgot the “e” and I’m so annoyed at myself.

A reason why I look down at my notes so much is because if you don’t say the exact wording, you get points taken off. The point of this class is to be a better public speaker, but you can’t be as good if you have to look down at your notes to make sure you’re saying the right transitional phrases and whatnot. You'll notice in the commemorative speech I used my notecard once just to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything and that was great because it wasn’t as structured. I said “um” a lot in that speech though because my brain doesn’t work that fast yet I guess.

I call out Sydnee (the same Sydnee who fell on her butt & farted in the “Broadcast & Sound Engineering” video) in this speech. Then at the end you can hear her defending herself with good points and once again I told her to come to me after class for a better/longer conversation because she was the next speaker. She didn’t come up to me, but I think he’s not a good representation of a Christian because no one is except Jesus. BUT he tries his best and gets the message out there, but still lives in the world like everyone else and has his downfalls because he’s a human, a human in the entertainment industry no less. It’s funny because the next year we had a class together and we sat next to each other and became actual friends. I guess we were friends after the video we made together, but better friends for sure.

Speech quotes: “The social problem i’m trying to resolve is that people, specifically Christians, don’t know about Chance The Person; they might know about Chance The Rapper kinda, but they don’t know about Chance The Person.” - “Chance is important & influential to this generation. He’s like Kanye with a conscience.” (I don't really like that quote because it implies Kanye doesn’t have a conscience, but it sounded good and got my point across)

Things I liked:

“your passion on this topic + your topic in general (I <3 Chance)”

“Kanye w/ a conscience”

“callin’ people out LOL, your speech was good & hilarious as usual”

“your topic is so ‘out of the box’! Literally love your creativity”

“Chance The MF Rapper!!!”

“Bro your passion is for Chance is crazy. thanks for (?) us”

Things to improve on:

“nothing”

“I think you were trying to convince the audience that Christians should influence spheres of life including music. So maybe talk about the need to influence in all spheres of life”

“dont say so much of what you're going to do ‘so my subpoint is…’ just speak; dont use filler words; prepare a little more” (you have to say “my subpoint is”!!! it’s in the rubric. I totally agree on the filler words and prepare more though)

This was a very intimidating topic to choose because it’s fertile ground for comedy to be had. I actually did a paper on this in 7th grade too because I thought it could be funny. Part of me didn’t really want to do it because there was so much pressure on myself to make it as funny & fun as the other speeches. With the last speech, I looked at it as “make it as funny as possible with as many lpm (laughs per minute) as I can.” With this one, I took the approach of “come from a real place and find the comedy in the truth” which is a much better way to do comedy. I wrote down at the top of my notecard “more real than funny” so that way I’m not competing with myself because it’s different than the last times. Another reason I chose this topic is because they would take prayer concerns/praises at the beginning of the class and I thought I would be funny to say “pray for my girlfriend” and follow it up with “I don’t have a girlfriend, but just pray that I find one and she’s okay wherever she is right now.” So I was smiling at how absurd life would be if that were to happen. The teacher appearently saw that look on my face and asked if I had anything to say, so I basically said that and it was a running joke throughout the class, which made it even more ironic to do a how to speech on dating.

People expected me to go off the rails on this one, but instead I tried to follow the rubric as closely as I can, but also try to be funny within the limits because this speech was much more structured than the last. You'll hear me say what i’m about to say and then say it because you'd get points off if you didn’t do it that way. I thought that made it more distracting, but again it doesn’t matter what the majority of people think, only the person that gives you a letter at the end of the semester. Also, we had to use a visual aid and I thought it would be funny use a person as a visual aid and I thought of an actual good reason for it too, which you'll see.

Speech quotes: “Your motive for listening is easy, who doesn’t want a great man or woman in their life. And if you already have one, it’s never a bad time to upgrade.” - “It’s just two simple steps: don’t be repulsive & be yourself” - “it’s super essential to be vulnerable in front of people because it’s such a beautiful thing when two people are vulnerable in front of each other. And let the other person match your vulnerability and if they don't , just move on.”

Things I liked:

“your speech actually had good points & you have a great sense of humor.” which actually hurts a little because they’re saying they’re surprised I can make an intelligible argument haha.

“Bro you are a natural”

“engaging and funny”

“hilarious and well thought out.”

“your originality”

Things to work on:

“not wear the Nike Jacket”

“don’t wear the jacket over your dress shirt”

“Say beautiful not hot”

“look up from your notes more”

“stay in character. try not to use filler words.”

“be more structured’

Commemorative- acting as a memorial or mark of an event or person.

Most people did this speech on their parents, relative, or youth group leader. I, Tommy Waite of tommywaite.com, did it on myself. I pretended I was at an award show and at the beginning someone introduced me and when I turned around I turned into myself.

Nowhere in the rubric or otherwise does it say you can’t do it on yourself or that the things that you say need to be true. I hope I’ve become a cautionary tale the teacher needs to tell to the students not to do even though there’s no reason they cannot. My favorite part of this video is at the very end when the teacher leans in to turn off the camera, he lets out a groan. I imagine it’s at the thought of trying to grade this speech that no one else probably even thought of doing. This is more of a sidenote, but I think no one even thought of doing this is because they’re too afraid to do public speaking in the first place and are just focusing on surviving instead of making it fun. Anyway, he ended up deciding to be way strict (it wasn’t just me, he was a stickler to the whole class). He was probably just angry I found a “loophole” in the unstructured format. I earned a good grade in this class in my opinion, but ended up with not a great grade because the teacher’s opinion is the only one that matters, which is messed up.

Speech quotes: “i’m speechless” - “I just want to honor the Tommy Waite Institute for giving me this Tommy award” - “everyone wanted to know what I’d do if I didn’t win this. I guess we’ll never know. - Kanye”

Something they liked:

“Seriously, you are such a great entertainer! #soconfused”

“Your humor is infectious! Love it Tommy!”

“what just happened? I am so confused?”

“your humor. thanks for making me laugh”

“Bro you are the G.O.A.T”

“great flow”

“YOOOO I was Geeking!”

“umm… very creative. haha”

Things to work on:

“try not to use filler words. Make more eye contact and don’t break your character”

“I have no idea?”

“nothing.”

“scan the audience more and try not to say ‘uh’ or ‘um’ as much.”

“maybe more serious… :)”

“how much of this was prepared?”

“What just happened?? So funny!”

“Your speech was funny but it felt more like stand up comedy rather than a professional speech. you should use real examples and less filler words.”

“I have no clue what you were talking about.”

This was for our second speech in my communications class. For some reason the teacher didn’t record the first speech, in which the speaker had to bring in two objects to better get to know them. I brought in my microphone and my picture of Chance & I. This is what I wrote for that speech:

“I chose a mic because I love mics. I don't know why. There's just something about them that fascinates me. I also chose a mic because if you think of a microphone's perspective (like if a mic was personified), it's probably really self-centered. "People always talk to me or sing to me and everyone puts their lips on me". And I'm also really narcissistic, so I identify with the microphone. Not that everyone wants to talk, sing and kiss me, but I just think the world revolves me sometimes and I have to remind myself that if I wasn't alive the world would be almost exactly the same haha.

This next thing is my favorite picture of all time. I'm in it, of course tying it back to the narcissism haha, but it's of Chance The Rapper and I. It's not my favorite picture because I'm in it, it's my favorite because it reminds me that I met Chance The fricken Rapper. Him and Donald Glover are so inspiring as entertainers and boundary crossers

This is weird because I think it's important not to reveal everything about yourself right away to someone because then the mystery is gone and it's more fun to discover it on the way”

This speech was a speech about why communication is important. It’s kind of genius, but also kind of manipulative to make the student talk about why it’s good to take a mandatory class. It’s genius to make the students think of why it’s important and make themselves believe it to make a speech about it, but manipulative because the curriculum forces them to believe something that is fundamental to the class and if someone doesn’t believe that (which is everyone’s right to believe whatever they want) then the class falls apart. Luckily, I believe communication is important, proven from my tweet.

Speech quotes: “words are meaningless… Words are just merely just sounds & scribbles that we put meaning behind.” - “I think of my life as a social experiment (Chance reference).. if i’m faced with similar situations, I try to do different things that i’ve done in the past so that I know how to be better in the future. So even if I don’t get the result I wanted, I learn from it so it’s not a failure.”

We got peer evaluations after our speeches from our anonymous classmates and I will now share some things they liked from that:

“so humorous and engaging and witty and honest”

“true religion hat is tall(? Idk the last word, but my best guess lol). Your honesty was on 100”

“that you made people think, and you were very humorous. You truly had a few great points.”

“Drop out and be a comedian!”

“kept laughing yet again and great substance in this speech”

“You're so funny Tommy, become a comedian please, I’ll come to a show.”

“The HAT!!”

Things I could work on:

“eye contact, use space”

“Nothing”

“don’t wear the hat”

“one too few stripes on your tie.”

“just lose the hat dude”

“aviod using the phrase ‘um’ and the word ‘like’.”

'“wear something different”

This is a look at what happened during the making of Like It Is and promotionals I made that you wouldn't know about unless I showed you. This video contains a recording session, unheard verses, behind the scenes of "Just Dropped a Single" & "I'm Better Than You" and announcements.  I'm a nerd for this stuff and I made it for the fans that want to know more about me and the album. I know I would love it if my favorite people made videos like this to see what really goes on in their life. I also made this for the future me when I want to look back on what this period in my life was like and what I was doing.