Assignment: Releasing Tension

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Assignment: Releasing Tension

Assignment: Releasing Tension

Assignment: Releasing Tension

Channel Your Nervous Energy One common symptom of being nervous is shaky hands and wobbly knees. As we noted earlier, what triggers this jiggling is the extra boost of adrenaline your body is giving you—and the resulting energy that has to go somewhere. Your muscles may move whether you intend them to or not. Take control by channeling that energy. One way to release tension is to take a leisurely walk before you arrive wherever you will be speaking. Taking a slow, relaxing walk can help calm you down and use up some of your excess energy. Once you are seated and waiting to speak, grab the edge of your chair (without calling attention to what you arc doing) and gently squeeze the chair to release tension. No one needs to know you’re doing this—just unobtrusively squeeze and relax, squeeze and relax. You can also purposely tense and then release your muscles in your legs and arms while you’re seated. You don’t need to look like you’re going into convulsions; just imperceptibly tense and relax your muscles to burn energy. One more tip: You may want to keep both feet on the floor and gently wiggle your toes rather than sit with your legs crossed. Crossing your legs can sometimes cause one leg or foot to go to sleep. Keep- ing your feet on the floor and slightly moving your toes can ensure that all of you will be wide awake and ready to go when it’s your turn to speak.

As you wait to be introduced, focus on remaining calm. Act calm to feel calm. Give yourself a pep talk; tense and release your muscles to help you relax. Then, when your name is called, walk to the front of the room in a calm and collected manner. Before you present your opening, attention-catching sentence, take a moment to look for a friendly, supportive face. Think calm and act calm to feel calm.

Visualize Your Success Studies suggest that one of the best ways to control anx- iety is to imagine a scene in which you exhibit skill and comfort as a public speaker.44

As you imagine giving your speech, picture yourself walking confidently to the front and delivering your well-prepared opening remarks. Visualize yourself giving the en- tire speech as a controlled, confident speaker. Imagine yourself calm and in command. Positive visualization is effective because it boosts your confidence by helping you see yourself as a more confident, accomplished speaker.45

Research has found that it’s even helpful to look at a picture of someone confi- dently and calmly delivering a speech while visualizing yourself giving the speech;

16 CHAPTER 1 Speaking with Confidence

such positive visualization helps manage your apprehension.46 You could even make a simple drawing of someone speaking confidently.47 As you look at the image, imag- ine that it’s you confidently giving the speech. It’s helpful if the visual image you’re looking at is a person you can identify with—someone who looks like you or some- one you believe is more like you than not.48

Give Yourself a Mental Pep Talk You may think that people who talk to them- selves are slightly loony. But silently giving yourself a pep talk can give you confidence and take your mind off your nervousness. There is some evidence that simply believ- ing that a technique can reduce your apprehension may, in fact, help reduce your ap- prehension.49 Giving yourself a positive message such as “I can do this” may be a productive way to manage your anxiety. Here’s a sample mental speech you could de- liver to yourself right before you speak: “I know this stuff better than anyone else. I’ve practiced it. My message is well organized. I know I can do it. I’ll do a good job.” Re- search provides evidence that people who entertain thoughts of worry and failure don’t do themselves any favors.50 When you feel yourself getting nervous, use positive messages to replace negative thoughts that may creep into your consciousness. Ex- amples include the following:

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

  • The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

    Discussion Questions (DQ)

    • Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
    • Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
    • One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
    • I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.

    Weekly Participation

    • Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
    • In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
    • Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
    • Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.

    APA Format and Writing Quality

    • Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
    • Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
    • I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.

    Use of Direct Quotes

    • I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
    • As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
    • It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.

     

    LopesWrite Policy

    • For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
    • Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
    • Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
    • Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

    Late Policy

    • The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
    • Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
    • If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
    • I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
    • As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

    Communication

    • Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: 
      • Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
      • Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

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