join Toastmasters

I recently started popping into the meetings of Speak and Lead Toastmasters in Rutherford NJ. The group meets on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month from 8pm to 9pm in Rutherford Borough Hall.

It’s short, and not as frequent as the other groups to which I belonged, so it fits quite well into my schedule.

Remember book reports from elemmentary school?

A book report is a great speech. Seriously. Think if it as a 5-7 minute audio book. Read a book about something you want to learn, study it, prepare the speech, and I am confident that by doing the speeck, you will have committed a great deal more about the topic to your memory than if you just read the book.

Plus, you’ll know off another Toastmaster speech!

For our meeting Just prior to Halloween we are doing Table Topics a little differently than usual. Instead of the typical question and answer session, the Table Topics will start a “ghost story” and each participant will continue the story using characters and plot devises from previous speakers and adding new ones along the way.

We’ve had fun with these story telling session in the past and they may be a source of fun and skill building in your club as well.

Joined My Second Group Today! (or is it my fourth since I was a member of two groups in San Diego?)

Whatever the case, I am now a part of two groups and should be able to sandwich some meetings into my schedule every month. Looking forward to the chance to speak.

I’ve decided on one club for sure and joined this evening. They only meet twice a month so I will be looking for another club to join as well. Most likely the second club will be the Saturday morning one.

I was planning on going to the Toastmasters group that meets Saturday mornings but found myself in that wonderful dreamy state where you’re partly asleep and partly awake – you know the one where fantasy and reality cross -

- so I stayed in bed too long to make it.

Next week!

I visited a Toastmasters group this morning and liked what I saw, so far anyway.

Before I join I do want to visit a few more times. They are on their summer schedule and have a lower than usual turn out. Some of the other groups I visited were so hung up on parliamentary procedures (I motion that we laugh, do we have a second on that motion?) that there was not way that I would get anything out of it. I just want to make sure that when the others start showing up again the club doesn’t get all House of Lords on me.

But for now, this looks like a good group.

I ran across a couple of Toastmasters Clubs in New Jersey and emailed them – got a response from one of them whereby the person stated that they ran across me on 43things. How strange is that.

(Twilight Zone Music Goes Here)

But I have no idea of who they are on 43Things. Could they be one of my stalkers, er, subscribers ? ?

....the group I am thinking of joining met tonight but the meeting was not all that inspiring. ARGH! Did they all have a case of the Mondays? Is this that stupid New Jersey summer thing? There is a group that meets on Saturday mornings that meets again in two weeks or so – maybe I will check that group out before I decide what to do.

I shot an email to a bunch of local Toastmasters groups and learned a few things. 1) Most things shut down in the summer 2) Toastmasters is not as big a thing in NJ as in San Diego 3) From the sounds of things some groups are better than others. Can’t wait for the groups to start meeting again. Who would have thought I’d have a reason to not like summer?