Rashell Sanchez

Speech class is my favorite class this semester so far; I'm not even joking. Learning how to speak in public, making my own research, improving my PowerPoint slides, and forgetting my fear when it comes to presenting are only a few abilities that I have learned in this class. This time, we had the opportunity to present with the same group but made groups of two people within the group for each sub-topic. The group's main topic was Self-Care and my partner was Nicole. She was intelligent, collaborative, supportive, friendly, and creative, which made working with her very easy. We felt kind of lost in the beginning until we started talking, coming up with ideas, and researching our topic, Social Self-Care; then, everything started looking clearer.

Overall, everything in our group went smoothly. Professor Sherri gave us more than enough time to prepare our presentation and so we did, we prepared. We divided the main topic into five subtopics (mental self-care, social self-care, emotional self-care, physical self-care, and good eating), we made an agenda where each couple put in their part and sent it to the professor to have a guide of our presentation, then, each couple sent their vocabulary words and a brief summary of their chapter,  and lastly, we did the PowerPoint slides. 

Contrarily to our first presentation, we presented first this time but for some reason, I felt more confident when presenting. I spoke about social self-care, and one of the things that caught my attention was how important it is to take care of people we are surrounded by but also get away from people who don't add anything positive to our lives. Whether it's a family member, a friend, or someone we "love" it is imperative for our mental sanity to step aside from people who are not contributing to our growth and success. 

Out of all of the topics we touched upon, the most interesting for me was "Good Eating" since I have always liked eating balanced and exercising. Additionally, I learned how it contributes to our physical health (skin, body, cells, organs)  and helps us to live longer by reducing heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.

      

On the other side, Group 2 was brief but concise. They talked about "Paying It Forward", and "Charities" and how this is related to our happiness and well-being.

Whenever I approached somebody and say something positive such as "I like your outfit", donate to someone in need, or help in any way I immediately start feeling happy. Group 2 explained in depth why this happens and the reason is that when we do something that benefits others our brain releases a hormone called oxytocin which makes us feel good. They also explained how an act of kindness will most of the time be passed on to someone else which I find beautiful. I think we should never be afraid to act kindly toward a person. Small things that might not mean anything to us can change somebody's day completely so if you have something positive to say just DO IT, you will make someone happy.

Group 2 also explained some benefits of charity both for the giver and the recipient:

• Improve the quality of life for others
• Build stronger communities.
• Support those in need.
• Inspire others to do good deeds.
• Promotes good value.
• Foster civic engagement and leadership.
• Drive economic growth.

Many benefits are obtained from charity and we can easily contribute to its growth. Either volunteering, supporting economically to a foundation that does charity, or simply doing it on our own. What really matters is acting in any way. Once we start, we will notice a before and after on our happiness, well-being, and life satisfaction.

Then again, Group 3 was the most outstanding for me. They are always so synchronized, prepared, and confident when speaking that I even feel good envy lol. I try to learn from their presentations as much as I can. 

They went over "What Happiness Does for Society?" and the reason why I loved this presentation is that they showed many aspects beyond the scenes that actually impact significantly our happiness without even realizing it. Money is one of them; some would say that money does not buy happiness but it actually DOES. Having the necessary income to cover all of our expenses give us a feeling of comfort, stability, and happiness that poverty does not. It is proved that poor people or people with insufficient income present high levels of stress, depression, and health problems.

I also loved Anabella's slides. She spoke about life expectancy before and now, and she added three antique pictures that I am still wondering where she got them from. They look so old and so real at the same time. She compared life expectancy back in the day and now and WOW it really changed. Life expectancy in the past was around 35 years old compared to now which is 85 years old it is just INSANE. People were eating things they were not supposed to PLUS there was no effective medical care. 

These were the pictures

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In conclusion, I learned tons this time, I acknowledged myself and my classmates about many similar but different topics while having fun, I listened to their presentations and their knowledge, absorbed as much as I could paying attention to the abilities they have that I would also like to have, and most importantly; I proved to myself again that I can do this. I'm VERY excited about the next project and already wondering what I will get from it.