Speech Class Reflection

Published 5 years ago -


Leslie Roda – Staff Writer

In Professor Knoles’s speech class, she tasked us with coming up with a class project that will not only benefit the class, but also benefit the people we are trying to get involved with. It took us quite a while to figure out what we wanted to do as a class. She had the class split up into groups and had us first come up with organizations that we wanted to help. Then, she challenged us to come up with a project proposal for the three choices we thought were going to work best.

The class chose to talk to a group of people at the Eisenberg Assisted Living Center in Worcester, Mass. On Friday, November 2, our speech class went to Eisenberg where they had planned for a discussion and lunch. Prior to attending Eisenberg, the class had come up with three different sets of questions: some easy questions, moderately difficult questions and personal questions.

Depending on how the conversation went, we asked the questions as we thought appropriate depending on where the conversation was going.

Senior political science major and marketing minor, Mark Blatchford, said the most surprising thing about talking to the people at Eisenberg was “the amount of stuff we had in common, like music and activities.” He went on to say that he likes more classic music like Sinatra, Martin and the Andrews sisters and the people he talked to enjoyed that music as well. Blatchford explained about their commonalities, “It was small stuff that you wouldn’t really think about,” he said.

It seemed as though none of the students wanted to leave. Our class went to Eisenberg during our class period and when the class ended, whoever had a class right after left and everybody else stayed if they could for lunch.

This is where we switched up the groups, giving everybody some more people to meet and the opportunity to connect with them.

Junior theology major and math minor, Corey Soper, explained what he learned from his visit to Eisenberg stating, “I got an even greater sense of the Worcester community. I realized just how friendly people can be and that there are people who really enjoy being able to talk with somebody new.”

“I honestly think they made some new friends. One of the residents and I were really excited to find some interesting connections that we have, and she encouraged me to come visit again,” Soper said. He continued to explain that one of the resident’s sons or grandsons was also a theology major who was interested in ministry.

You never know who you will find commonalities with. Sometimes, you may end up being best friends with someone you would have never thought you would have. You may realize that you have a lot more in common with a person that you may not necessarily have talked to in the past. Never be close-minded to anything, because you may learn not only about the other person, but about yourself and how you can connect with many different types of people- no matter their age, gender, race, ethnicity, etc.

Leslie Roda, a senior, studies English. She is a staff writer for Le Provocateur.

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