I invited Fred Robertson, my old debate coach who is now retired after teaching and coaching for over 30 years, to speak to my debate classes about the importance of public speaking. Here were some highlights (thread):

"Public speaking is an incredibly difficult thing to be able to do well. The majority of people suck at it. So if you become good at it, that's rare - and people notice rare things."

"When you become a public speaker, you sort of learn about who you are. Everyone's different, and if you try to be anyone other than who you are when you're speaking to a crowd, they'll know you're a phony. And the only people who like phonies are phonies themselves."

"I've messed up plenty of times when speaking to groups of people, said some stuff that I shouldn't have said. But the best thing to do is to apologize. I think apologizing is a sign of strength."

"The 3 things, in my mind, that make a person smart is 1) they read. A lot. To want to continue learning. 2) to write well and write to express your thoughts. And 3) to be able to communicate with others about the things that make you smart."

"You can't really fail at debate. You can lose a debate, but you can't really fail. Even the best of the best debaters lose 35% of their rounds."

"The fact that you're here, the fact that you decided, 'hey, I'm going to take debate and go to class,' means that you're probably a pretty cool person."

Fred is a cool human. Grateful to have been taught by him and to bring his legacy and what he taught me to Burke. I've got lots of smart humans in my classes, and I'm excited to see them shine. (End thread)