FIRST, THINK: Who is this person and why are they significant? Make a list of people you might like to talk about and list some adjectives to describe them. Consider how comfortable and capable you are discussing someone if they are no longer alive.
- My mom because she is the strongest mentally physical person I know beucase wha tshe has gone through
- Strong, resilient, extraordinary, lovable, and selfless
NEXT: BRAINSTORM: What other stories or anecdotes can you think of? Continue to add depth to your outline/speech. (Writing a draft of a toast for your “person,” even if you are not composing a toast, might help shape your speech.) Imagine that this is a SKETCH.
I would do this in a form of a toast
- Living with cancer and beating it
- getting the bends
- Being in and out of the hospital a good portion of her life
- loosing her leg when she wasn’t suppose to, learning to do walk again
NEXT: NARROW: Pick one person and focus on what you think your audience should know about this person.
- How resilience they are for going through all of the hardships
NEXT: STRUCTURE: Lay out 3 clear parts on paper: Intro, Body, Conclusion and start to budget the time your will spend delivering each part.
- Intro – My mom is the strongest person I know
- Body – Going over why I see here that way. Touching base on past and focusing on recent challenges. Reflecting on how I felt and what I have learned from seeing her going through those hardships.
- Conclusion – Refer back to her being the strongest person and my point of view of her
NEXT: IN MOTION: Draft, add, subtract, practice, revise, repeat. This speech, like all the others, is meant to evolve as you keep working with it throughout the week.
Rough Draft 1
Today I want to toast an amazing woman, Jodie Rapp, my mother.
- Living a carefree until everything changed
- How she got non hodgkin lymphoma in her groin at 20
- How it affect her life
- Pregnancy
- Lymph nodes
- How she overcame it
- How it affect her life
- Losing her leg from a doctor who didn’t run all tests
- Her struggle
- Mentally
- Physically
- Learning to live with one leg
- living in a wheelchair
- Learning to walk all over again
- Getting a prosthetic leg
- Getting accepted to do an experimental surgery
- Osseointegration
- Her struggle
- Her bouncing back from every medically struggle that came her way
- Hearing her overcome cancer
- Seeing her live with lymphedema
- Seeing her lose her leg only to overcome it with a prosthetic leg
Final Draft
Rough Draft 2
Warn about pictures before hand
Today I want to toast an amazing woman, my mother.
- Living a carefree
- Scuba diving all over the world
- Traveling
- How she developed non hodgkin lymphoma in her groin at 20
- Going through experimental treatment – Sloan kettering, NY
- 7 months chemo 3 months radiation putting you on the edge brink of death
- Only 7 out of 10 people survived
- How it affect her life
- Lymph nodes
- Leading to lymphedema – lack of fluid draining in her right leg due to her lymph nodes not draining the excess fluid
- Pregnancy/ reproductive system (uterus)
- Where I come in 2004, adoption
- Lymph nodes
- How she overcame it
- This appearance is all I know
- Going through experimental treatment – Sloan kettering, NY
- Losing her leg in 2017 from a doctor who didn’t run all tests
- Her struggle
- Physically
- Phantom pains
- Nerve pinches
- All the meds she was on
- Mentally
- How was she acting, lashing out, anything setting her off
- Seeing her be vulnerable for the first time
- How people see their parent
- How seeing this affected me and what I learned
- Being the parent now
- Learning to basically live alone at 14
- Cooking cleaning, keeping up with school and dance
- Asking for help from others
- Coming to terms with her new life
- Physically
- Learning to live with one leg
- Presentation pic 1
- living in a wheelchair
- Walking on walker
- Walking with canes
- Learning to walk all over again
- Getting a prosthetic leg
- Presentation pic 2
- Nice computer leg
- Helping prosthetics students to learn
- Getting accepted to do an experimental surgery
- Osseointegration
- Describe what it is
- Her reaction to it
- It falling through at the last minute
- Osseointegration
- Her struggle
- Her bouncing back from every medically struggle that came her way
- Hearing her overcome cancer
- Seeing her live with lymphedema
- Seeing her lose her leg only to overcome it with a prosthetic leg
