Am I boring?

I generally enjoy public speaking.  It is the only time  where everyone present actually has to listen to what I have to say.  In a sense, it is my moment of glory, with which I can do what I wish.  Quite obviously, the goal is to deliver an entertaining presentation.  I usually practice a good deal in order to accomplish the goal of making a good presentation, and to help avoid making the audience feel uncomfortable along with me.  To do so, I capitalize and focus on my strengths, and ignore my weaknesses and pretend that they do not exist.  

I would like to capitalize on how I enjoy public speaking, and my eye contact.  I think that these two strengths make a speaker seem more confident overall.  Confidence is the key to a presentation in my opinion.  Without it, your ethos is shot, and you seem weak and ineffective to the audience.  Eye contact not only radiates confidence, but it also helps the crowd feel connected and engaged.  If they see me enjoying my time speaking, the prevailing hope is that I can impart some enthusiasm in them. By maintaining eye contact and relaying my enjoyment, I want to focus on being confident and displaying this to the audience.  

As I said before, I usually pretend that I don't have any weaknesses when I deliver my speech in order to maintain confidence.  However I have numerous weaknesses, the most obvious being a rather flat and boring tone, and the fact that I tend to deviate from any plan I had and completely surprise myself with the words that I emit.  The tone has a huge impact on my speech.  Since it is flat, the important part of my speech are not highlighted.  The rogue nature of my speeches could be reigned in a bit as it often results in a lot of verbal fillers.  

How I became one of too many

The family has been an ever changing entity.  It has steadily lost focus in modern society.  In addition to losing focus in society, the family has also steadily changed in size.  A variety of changes have been attributed to the average size of the family over the past view decades.  My thesis will be something similar to the following sentence: Since the 1950's the overall size of the family has decreased throughout the generations due to a variety of major social changes and a pushes to break long held traditions.

For the essay I will focus on going through the generations and going over the size of the family.  As the years go by, the family steadily grows smaller until present day.  After going through the generations I will explain the causes that influenced such a major change.  These influences include how pop culture reflected family size with popular television series like Happy Days or Modern Family.  The growing divorce rate, increase in contraception use, and the growing commonality of both parents working also has greatly impacted the focus of the family, and therefore the size of the family.  Much of the information I use will be statistics regarding the sizes of the family.  Other facts such as divorce rates, contraception statistics and other related information will play an important role in supporting this shift.

Current Source List:

Family Studies Institute
Pew Research Center
Bureau of Labor Statistics
United States Census Bureau
The New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/health/families.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Public Broadcasting System

Public Opinions

After reading about paradigm shifts, the ones that I found to be most striking and interesting are historical paradigm shifts.  The first, and one of the most important in American history took place in the early 1940's.  Since the WWI, the United States has shrunk back in its' shell, refusing to become embroiled in European conflicts, despite the desperate pleas for help from countries such as France and England.  However, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a massive shift in public opinion about the entering foreign conflicts.  The national opinion went from highly isolationist to supporting a large conflict.  This opinion carried through up until the middle of the Vietnam War.

Another massive paradigm shift within the United States occurred in 2001 in regards to security.  Suddenly, national security became a massive priority.  A government department was created, and a slew of laws such as the Patriot act filled the floor in Congress.  The United States public was in a panic to heighten security measures in areas such as public transportation, more specifically, airline security.  This sparked fierce arguments about how far security could, especially in collecting information and spying upon citizens.

Both of the examples above are paradigm shifts as public opinion experienced a massive change within the United States.  The change from isolationistic to pro conflict was sparked by a Pearl Harbor making US citizens realize that the conflict truly involved them.  The feeling of vulnerability cause a shift in public opinion that captured nearly the entire nation.  The public opinion regarding national security was caused by the attacks on 9/11.  The nation once again felt unsafe, and the response was a nationwide call for security to be heightened in almost every area.  Both of these are widespread shifts in public opinion that were influenced by deadly attacks on home soil.