Can Everyone Hear Me?

Most people are required to take a public speaking class in college whether they would like to or not. As far as the topics they can speak about, the options are usually endless. It had come time for me to pick a topic for my informative speech and I knew exactly what I wanted to discuss: Tay Sachs disease. I had first heard about Tay Sachs disease through a science course in high school and I watched a documentary about families that had children with Tay Sachs. For those who don’t know, Tay Sachs disease is a rare condition where nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord are progressively destroyed and it eventually causes symptoms such as decreased motor functions, hearing loss, seizures, exaggerated reactions to loud noises, and eventually death in early childhood. Most children with Tay Sachs only live up to the age of 4 years old. Now, why did I want to present on this topic so bad? I wanted to educate my peers about a disease that was not commonly known that could affect their future offspring and how important it is to get genetically tested for the genetic mutation that causes this fatal disease.

 

Through this speech, I was able to describe the causes, the symptoms, and the impact of Tay Sachs disease on families and friends. I was able to gather all of this information from extensive research (academic journals, studies, interviews, etc.) and compiled it all into an outline format that would then be transferred into a recorded speech. I did everything laid out in the rubric for the assignment and beyond. Even though this speech was for a class, I would have loved for it to take a different form. Whether that be an animated video, a presentation, a written piece, or a fictional story, I would want them all to have the same, powerful impact that the speech had. These formats have to potential to be even more powerful than the speech was.

 

Looking back on that speech, I wish I would have been able to make it more personal. I wish I did not have a time constraint and that I could connect more with my given audience on a more vulnerable and deep level. I truly believe that learning about diseases like Tay Sachs disease is crucial for everyone to understand or to at least know the risks of them. My assignment was to strictly inform my audience about Tay Sachs disease, but if it were up to me I would want to be able to utilize skills and strategies that would develop empathy and compassion among my audience for people that have experienced a life-changing disease like this one and to better prepare my audience in case something like this would happen to them.