November 2014 archive

TED Talk Overview

After reviewing my Ted Talk video, I can tell that there is a lot of room for improvement. However, I am glad to say that I have come a long way in my speaking abilities. Because I read intensively into the subject of my video, female sexuality, and am interested in it, I found that it was much easier to talk about. Rather than memorizing a speech, I more or less talked from the knowledge I had, using the powerpoint as a foundation. Although this did make my presentation more conversational and less stiff, it also made it quite long. While I was speaking I would remember facts that I had read and would add them in, making my presentation significantly longer than it should have been. Also, I noticed that my transitions were lacking. Although I would know about two separate subsets of information, I wouldn’t know how to efficiently connect them without it sounding awkward or forced. This would then sometimes lead me to stumble across my words, have a prolonged period of silence, or awkwardly fidget around. Despite all that could have been improved with my presentation, I am happy with my progress. I consider myself to be a below average public speaker and generally get incredibly nervous before having to do it. However, because I was more comfortable with the subject than with other previous subjects, I was more confident in my knowledge.

TED Talk

My paradigm shift paper discussed the changes of how society viewed sexuality, and I took a special interest in both the evolution and devolution of dating. I took a chronological approach and gave a summary of females and their sexuality from the Victorian Age, up to present time. I then concluded what this could mean for the future of our country.

For the TED talk video, I think that I want to have more of a focus on the “why” instead of the “what.” I want to explain the reasons why change occurred, as opposed to giving a simple summary. I would also like to have more of a focus on how sexuality is perceived today. The reason for this is because we are living in the present, so thus modern sexuality relates to us personally. I may add how drugs and alcohol come into play, because they are a big part of college life, and do definitely influence one’s sexuality.

Another big part I would like to add is to go into much greater detail about what this could mean for the future. Will sexuality continue to grow? Will it plateau? For some reason, would it decline? I want to add this because I believe it is the most interesting. Sociologists and sexologists alike have both given ambiguous answers as to the future of sex. Summaries of the Victorian Era sexuality are fascinating, but they have already occurred. However, the future brings a long much more curiosity because nobody knows for sure what will happen. For now, we can only give our best guess based off of prior data, extrapolation, and theories.