Quit

My colleague's Basic Speech No. 2:
(Gerald Zalsos)

I'm gonna text Ebony that I'm going to back out in delivering my speech no. 2 and talk to Chris that I will quit toastmaster. Yes, fellow toastmasters, friends and guests, that was in my thoughts before preparing this speech and standing here in front of you.

    How about you? Did you ever come to a point of quitting? It might be in your projects at work, winning the heart of your co-worker and what's worst is trying to end your God given life.

    I know in some point in our life we simply quit in the middle of our endeavors and sometimes quit before it even starts. But how come we resort to this? We may say, we are not prepared, or we don't have money or means, or we don't have time or any other reasons that we may come up just to justify our quitting. But in reality, it is your fear to see the outcome as you might fail and lost of motivation or courage to continue.

    Fellow toastmasters and friends, let me tell you one of my experience that I quit and regretted by doing so. It was  in college; in one of my major engineering subjects. I got a terror professor as what my classmates describe and had heard from the senior students. Indeed, my new professor leave up to his nickname and in our first day of class, he layed down his policies, grading systems and keep reminding us on the percentage of students that usually passed in his class. He then said that we will be having 4 major quizzes in which our final grade will be calculated only from those 4 quizzes.

    Fellow toastmasters and friends, what do you think? Did I quit?  No! Instead I am very motivated and took it as a challenge. I aimed to get a 1.0 grade for that subject. Yes, that was my goal.

    First major quiz came. I was very excited and eager to answer. Our quiz was composed of only 1 item - problem solving. After taking the quiz, the result was pretty obvious as I studied well and was very motivated eventhough the quiz took hours to finish and 2 pages yellow pad – back to back. I got a perfect score in that quiz. And what wowed me was when I knew that only 2 of us passed. The other one was my seatmate who copied 60% of my solutions. The rest of the class got zero.

    First minor goal achieved! Proceed to the upcoming 2nd quiz.

    However, problems came along the way; like my step mother hasn't sent my monthly allowance for 2 months, having arguments with my father for not staying in their house during semestral break as I had chosen to to stay in my mother's, and the popular acclaimed problem in the government institution the delays. My monthly university stipend or allowance was delayed.

    One afternoon, I went to my class to relax. When I arrived, I noticed that my classmates were so busy and I asked one of them. “What's happening?” My classmate answered. “We will be having our 2nd major quiz.” I was shocked! Oh no! The heat started to build in my face and I got panicked. I don't have pencil, rulers, triangles and protractors for my drawing, calculator and what was worst I did not study.

    I tried to gather my composure to be able answer but still I don't know how to solve the given quiz.

    I am very disappointed with myself for not being on track on my goal. After that quiz I decided to quit. Yes, I stopped my studies. I lost my motivation to continue and I was afraid to receive my test result and confirm that I failed.

    In the course of my life, after that incident my perception in life began to change. I lost my interest or drive to compete to be the best. I was beginning to not give my 100% of what I can do. I stopped setting up goals for myself and became a person that just go with the flow. To sum it up, I started to have fear that I might fail and lost motivation and courage to move forward. My life became stagnant for years.

    Fellow toastmasters and friends. There are times in our life that we felt that we are not moving forward because we lost motivation and courage and afraid of failure. Are you happy and satisfied with that? If not, try to reminiscent your life and evaluate where you are now. For knowing where you stopped, it is also knowing where to start. Do not be afraid to fail as in failure we became much stronger in our next endeavors. Finally, look for motivation to make you move forward. Motivation that you may get from your mentors, family or love ones, friends and within yourself.