““Public Speaking Is No Longer a 'Soft Skill.

' It's Your Key to Success in Any Field”

Gallo’s 2019 article ““Public Speaking Is No Longer a 'Soft Skill.' It's Your Key to Success in Any

Field” discusses the value of being well spoken in a work environment. I found it to be a clever

way of thinking through things. It’s nice to consider the working environment starting to consider

the value of feelings and emotions. Usually you don’t see those two clinking together. It’s nice. It

sort of humanizes the working environment.

One thing I do wonder though, what makes good speaking? Personally, I wouldn’t

consider a perfectly tidy business inquiry as good writing. Work usually tries to push this idea of

formalness, but if you’d actually go through with it you’d get absolutely no recognition at all.

Who’s going to remember the guy who did nothing to draw any attention? You’ve seen me

practice this in some of my emails. That being said, I wouldn’t say I’ve devised the perfect plan

for every situation. I’m certain that I’d probably get slapped around silly if I tried to challenge an

actual professional on the matter, but I think it works well enough for me.

That being said, I’m certainly trailing behind in my presentation skills. You saw my

crucible presentation. That was a disaster. I stumbled on a lot on a lot of my words and had a

tendency to mumble. Though, there’s always a possibility that I was just having an off day. Who

knows? Maybe I’m some sort of god of presentations and I’ve yet to fulfill my true potential. I

hope not. That’d be a super lame thing to be god of.

Gallo, Carmine. “Public Speaking Is No Longer a 'Soft Skill.' It's Your Key to Success in Any Field.”

Inc.com, Inc., 4 Jan. 2019,

https://www.inc.com/carmine-gallo/public-speaking-is-no-longer-a-soft-skill-its-your-key-to-succe

ss-in-any-field.html​.
 “Tone Matching: What Is It, Who Uses It, and Why?”

Khanna’s 2019 article “Tone Matching: What Is It, Who Uses It, and Why?”

discusses the importance of being on the same level with the people you write to. I

thought it was pretty alright. Being someone who texts quite a bit, I think I’ve grown to

understand the need to convey meaning behind words in writing. Infact, I’d think it’s

especially important for texts since the conversations tend to involve a lot more personal

emotion, thus the need to get that emotion across becomes ever more prudent.

I think my biggest help in this field would actually have to be listening to

audiobooks. Suddenly, every message becomes something more than words on a

page. That being said, would my messages actually be an audiobook, it’d be one of the

worst selling books in history. One, I don’t describe how any of my messages are

conveyed, so it’d pretty much just be a random guy having a random conversation with

themselves.

I’m getting off topic though. I think this idea of portraying emotion in writing is

quite a brilliant one. You can share your thoughts with tons of people all over the world.

It’s a marvel how important it’s actually become. With writing, everybody has a chance

to have a voice. The downside of this, of course, is that there are a lot of idiots now that

also have a voice. Some might think the future looks bleak because of all the stupid
people that’ve popped up recently, but frankly, I’d think they’d have always been here:

mostly as politicians.

“How a New Alphabet is Helping an Ancient People Write its own Future”

The article “How a New Alphabet is Helping an Ancient People Write its own Future” by

Deborah Bach (2019) discusses the efforts of two brothers on their quest to develop a

written language variant of their native tongue. It’s interesting to see how what once just

seemed like a fun idea became something so big. It really goes to show the importance of

not giving up on ideas, yeah?

Being an English speaker myself, a language known for its horrible complexity, I

wonder how they’ll put together things like grammar and sentence structure. The

spoken language had already existed long before, so it’s not like they’re working with

nothing here, but it’s still interesting to think about. That being said, I probably don’t

have the brightest idea on how to develop a language, since the only experience I ever

had was my own. For me, writing my own language would just be replacing the letters of

the alphabet with different symbols. I don’t know much about chinese, but I’m pretty

sure it’s a little different than that, yeah?

 Though I doubt I’ll ever end up using it in my lifetime, I hope for the best for the

brothers. Preserving a culture through developing something new is an incredible story.

I wonder, as the future ever steadily approaches, what languages we’ll develop next.

​Bach, D. (2019). How a New Alphabet is Helping an Ancient People Write its own Future.

Microsoft News. ​Retrieved from ​https://news.microsoft.com/stories/people/adlam.html

“The perils of indifference”

So, what were my thoughts on the Elie Weisel’s great perils expressed in his speech ​The Perils of

Indifference?​ It was certainly a powerful speech. Knowing Elie previously from his work from

“Night,” I can definitely see the similarities. He certainly has this other-worldliness in his style.

It makes me wonder how he read it aloud. Voice and writing both have very different ways of

expressing themselves. Take my writing, for example. Should I be obliged to read this aloud,

you’d probably get an entirely different experience out of it.

Now on things actually expressed in the speech, I find myself often conflicted on these

sorts of matters. It’s hard to decide when one shouldn’t harden their hearts when it comes to

matters of war. War isn’t moral. It’s a hurricane of horribleness. Who can you blame?

If I had to put it into simple terms, I’d probably say that Elie actually does have it the

right way around. Blame those who make the large scale decisions. Those who don’t have to face

the consequences of their words.

 Thinking it over, I once again come to the conclusion that I’ll never understand war. It’s

this strange portal where the ways of humanity don’t apply. Would our ancestors be proud?

Though they may have fought wars of their own, do they see the good in what we do? Is there a

just war? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Weisel, E. (4-10-17). ​The Perils of Indifference ​Retrieved from

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ewieselperilsofindifference.htm