Blog post #6

When I read Burkes “sucked beneath the streets of Las Vegas” I was very surprised at what I read. When anyone things of Las Vegas your first thought is Casinos, strip clubs, The Hangover, and the other 1000 shows that are based in Las Vegas. You think about the tall buildings and the bright neon lights lining the strip all attempting to attract you to come in and spend your money. But I personally have never thought about the negatives of Las Vegas the poverty, the drug addicts, and the bad things that are shadowed away from tourists. Every big city has their homeless and the ones who are standing on the corner with their piece of cardboard begging for money; some of them actually genuinely need the money, maybe they lost everything and everyone somehow, but others like the man mentioned in the audio clip only want the money to pay for a bad addiction that they have. The man in the audio clip lived in the sewers of the great Las Vegas, during the day he walks around and finds left behind credits in the casinos and then at night he gets his fix of meth and pays for a little bit of food to get by. To me this is crazy that I somehow never managed to think about the other side to this large, supposed “sin city” where people host bachelor parties or get the guys together for a guy’s weekend. The side where you see the homeless side and where they live and then travel up a few sets of stairs then bam there are wealthy people, weird crazy people walking around like nothing is ever or has ever been going on beneath them. Do the citizens of Las Vegas even know about this? It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t.

Blog Post #5

After reviewing the tape and watching a few other students as long as my own speech a saw many different things. As you could tell with just about everyone the nerves were very high as you stood in the front of the room presenting your speech your body does many things unknowingly to help you cope with the nerves. Me personally I was only a little nervous but I did notice that I did get a little hot whenever all the attention was on me. I did notice that I played with my notecards in my hand a little bit and I had a wide stance and kind of leaned back like I was in a casual conversation with my friends. I feel like that is a bad thing because I don’t project myself as being serious and informative. I did think that other than those two things I did a good job; I made good eye contact with my audience, and I didn’t pace around like I always do whenever I do anything. I listened to my speech and other than my stuttering problem and my problem with pronunciating certain letters I thought that I overall did a good job; I only fumbled over my words about 3 times. The one good thing that I did with my speech is that I projected my voice well and didn’t mumble like I usually do. In the future I would like to have a better posture and not flick or restack my notecards like I was doing; I would also like to not fumble over my words at all and work on my PowerPoint a little more to make it more interactive and not so plain.