I’ve been quite busy lately despite that there’s less than a month left of school. One of the things I’d been busy with is getting prepared for USG’s Graduation Celebration on May 7th. I say this because…I was selected to be the student speaker for USG’s Graduation Celebration! I honestly was very surprised that I was chosen to have this position since I was sure another student was going to have the position; and for the fact that it took me about a day or two to come up with a draft for the position. Due to the pandemic, our graduation celebration has to be virtual; so we had to find another way to ensure that we can get everyone’s speech into the virtual ceremony. So here’s the behind the scenes of the student speaker speech.

I had the privilege to return to the USG campus and honestly…I was overwhelmed. Being back on campus felt so strange, yet very nostalgic to me since I spent a semester and a half at the campus. I was joined by Steve Simon and Jeff Kenton at the Priddy Library so that the speech can be recorded there(yes we followed COVID Protocols) Again, the nostalgia got to me and had me thinking of the times I spent at the library to do assignments while waiting for either class to start or for my mother to pick me up. Now it was time to start recording the speech.

They had put a microphone on me so that they could hear me and adjust how I sounded in the tape. I had a teleprompter in front of me that displayed my speech and Steve, who you see in the left side of the picture would control the tempo of the speech so that it was linked with my tempo.

However, during the middle of the recording, the teleprompter malfunctioned and became slower than my tempo. This threw me for a loop and made me stumble on my words. Steve and Jeff were able to fix it and we continued around the time that the teleprompter began to malfunction. In the end, the recording went smoothly and we were able to get a recording in. If that teleprompter hadn’t malfunctioned, I probably would’ve done it all in one taping both Steve and Jeff said to me. I even had a partial look at how I was during the recording.

It was truly a wonderful experience to come back to USG and record a speech for the Class of 2021; I feel honored for being the student speaker this year. Thank you Steve and Jeff for assisting in this process and for helping ensure that our ceremony comes out strong and wonderful. More information about the Graduation Celebration will be out soon! Remember to RSVP by May 1st if you plan on attending! If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please let me know and I’ll get back to you on that! Thank you for reading my blog and I’ll see you on the next one! 🙂