It's Time For Apologies and Farewells!

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for every persuasive speech I missed, and I meant no disrespect to the people who gave those speeches. I came in about fifteen minutes late each day for the last two weeks of class, so I missed a speech per day. I'm not sure who gave those speeches, but whoever you are, I'm sorry. I even missed a day of class during the informative briefs, so I'm sorry to all of you too. And Andi, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for every class I missed and for every class I came in halfway through looking like a jackass. Not once did I have a legitimate excuse, and I'm sorry. My apologies are worthless, but they are sincere, and I'm obligated to give them.

I also want to get my apologies out of the way first before I talk about the class, because no matter how I feel about the class there is no excuse for me missing days. But I think the class was poorly designed. Andi, your lectures consisted of reading directly off your PowerPoints, and the information on your PowerPoints came out of the book. I only took nine pages of notes during the semester. To study for the midterm I looked over the sections in the book you listed on the study guide, and I got a B on the exam. I hope that method works for the final too.

The videos on the PowerPoints were nice diversions, and the TED speeches were hit or miss (that speech with the man who "kept going" was too sentimental). I also liked the exercise where we eavesdropped on someoneelse's conversation, because it's something I like to do anyway. But these are the only diversions I can think of. Your other lectures were not stimulating, and they did not offer anything the book did not.

The speeches taught me more than the lectures. Your feedback was to the point and focused, and made it easy for me to improve, as did watching other people in the class give speeches. The ones who made screw-ups like me made me more relaxed, and those that did better jobs than me gave me goals to reach. My second speech was an improvement over my first one, despite me losing my train of thought (if only I looked at my note card for reference in the first place).

Focus more on student speeches. Giving speeches teaches more than reading about how to give a speech off a PowerPoint. Don't worry if students don't know how to give a proper speech before they give their first one. Tear into them on their evaluations, tell them where they need to improve, and tell them why. It's important for them to know why they need to make an improvement beyond you telling them to do so, because otherwise they aren't learning, they're changing their speeches to please you.

And I'll end my criticism there. You're a great teacher Andi. You're understanding, you make yourself available to your students, and you're well-versed in modern communication, which is important for this class. You keep us up to date. And I liked both the blog and Facebook group. They made contacting you and other people in the class a quick process, and once I learned how to use the labels the blog was easy to navigate. Plus, the class introduced me to my lovely group members. I couldn't ask for anymore. Farewell!

Picture Source: http://www.allmoviephoto.com/photo/gene_hackman_the_french_connection_001.html