OK, so it happens: You got a bad grade, or at least a grade that is lower than you anticipated. It may be lower than you need to graduate, or lower than you need to get into medical school, or lower than you need to land the job with that consulting firm. Or just lower than you wanted. What do you do now? As a longtime graduate school faculty member, I am a seasoned veteran of the grading games; I earned my battle scars teaching a soft skills core course in a highly competitive graduate business school which used a forced grading distribution to boot: (X% of the class receives A’s, X% receives B- and below, and…
Sometimes impromptu speaking tasks sneak up on you, quick-like: Maybe your boss asks you to spend a few minutes providing a status report on your team’s project. Perhaps you’re in a training seminar or a graduate school classroom and have been asked to explain your views on a topic of interest. Or the informal chat followed by Q&A session you thought you had lined up at the Garden Club is billed as a “short talk” by you, “the expert”, instead. Regardless of the scenario, impromptu speaking almost always involves you with a few short minutes to get your head together and figure out what is going to come out of your mouth while members…