Freedman on the Go

At some point I’ll get around to writing a longer post about how ironic it is to be singing Disney music during a time when the corporation itself is under attack by Governor DeSantis for being too “woke.” For now, I’ll just thank Disney for being a staunch ally of our community for over 30 years. Our next concert occurs on June 24-25 and features musicians from the Oregon Symphony, which marks our first collaboration ever with them. I’ve included the link. I hope you’ll join us in June for a fantastic weekend full of song and Pride!

Hi all. I’ve decided to try a different tack on posting my articles. I will still put the link for the article at the end of this post, but whenever possible, I’d prefer to let you see the full text here. Henceforth you don’t necessarily have to click on the link unless I’m publishing in a magazine that requires it. And if you hit a paywall when that happens, I apologize in advance for that, but the magazines I hope to be published in always want subscribers. Please be patient as we figure this out together.

That said, I encourage you to click on the link to check out Voices! I’ve been in Toastmasters for nearly a decade, and even though I’ll continue to post my articles here, there’s plenty more to see in the magazine. For those of you who might be interested in joining Toastmasters, Voices! gives a lot of advice on public speaking and leadership. Please check it out when you can. This current article can be found on Pages 40-41 of Voices!

Now, on to the article itself!

What happens when you need to create a specific speech, but you can’t clarify all the points you want to make?

Taking notes used to be one of those tasks that I dreaded. I remember when I first learned to take notes back in grade school. At the time, I found it helpful, but only slightly. When your self-esteem isn’t that great to begin with and you’re taking classes like Social Studies where you feel profoundly stupid, the notes only served as a reminder that I had a lot more to learn. Flash forward to my adult years, and I was often asked to take notes for different organizations. Perhaps my least favorite time for note taking also became my most transformative experience for learning how to take notes correctly. From 2013 to 2015, I served on the Talent Committee at the Oregon Media Production Association where we tried to create policy and events that would help actors and other talent excel at their craft. During my first year, I was asked to take notes during our meetings. Not knowing how much information to take down, I ended up recording almost every aspect of the meeting. I was gently taught by a couple of people to summarize the different parts of the meeting by delineating the main points of each subject we covered. Gradually synopsizing the meeting became much easier, though by the time my tenure ended as secretary of our group, I truly hated note taking.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, during my time in Toastmasters, my attitude gradually changed to where I did almost a completely U-turn on taking notes. In two of my clubs, we have the meeting role of the Master Listener. Simply put, the Master Listener listens to the bulk of the meeting, takes notes on each of the speakers, and then gives a pop quiz to the rest of the club near the end of the meeting. One of the benefits of the Master Listener role is that it’s one of the easiest meeting roles to learn for newer members. However, it also provides an interesting challenge as the Master Listener also practices better active listening skills in picking up the various details of the meeting before creating questions for the rest of the club to answer. And as a better active listener, you’re more likely to catch details in the speeches you might have missed otherwise that might prove invaluable to you later as a speaker. As the Master Listener, I used the skills picked up from my time as the committee secretary, took meticulous notes, and enjoyed stumping our members and guests by giving very specific questions related to our meeting. I learned just as much from the experience as they did.

Perhaps the best time for me to take notes is when I’m brainstorming. I love brainstorming, and as someone who writes in multiple genres, brainstorming is a must in most situations to help clarify what it is you want to write. Unlike other forms of note taking, brainstorming is much more freeform, allowing greater flexibility but also eventually needing a way to organize one’s thoughts into a coherent story once you’ve hashed out the details. For example, world-building is one of my favorite activities as a writer of science fiction and fantasy as so many elements go into creating a milieu that is exciting to both the reader and the author. The main drawback in world-building is that you can become lost in your own creation and forget to write the story itself. Brainstorming should ultimately be about creating the environment you want for your speech or essay. I learned that If you’re spending too much time brainstorming, you’re probably overthinking what you want to do on your project. By taking the time to create the main points of my story or speech, I was able to flesh out my goals much more succinctly.

While I can’t always tell you that there are ways to enjoy note taking, certainly there are many benefits to using this skill. As our Club Secretary, for example, I’m able to take part in the direction of my club by recording the events of our executive committee meetings. And that’s perhaps the biggest takeaway. By taking notes for yourself, you ensure that you retain information for a longer period of time so you can improve your skillsets, whether that be as a student or an employee. By taking notes for others, you ensure that the group remains on track and accountable for their actions. And by using note taking as a means to create a speech, you make it possible to keep the speech on-topic by creating bullet points for your subject matter, making it easier for your audience to follow along.

Voices! March 2023