Professional competition advice

[Aragarthiel]

I've been nominated for a statewide competition that promotes a student as the face of technical colleges in my state. There are three levels of this competition:

• School level: 23 of us are competing, and from what I've seen, some of the students aren't cut out for it (playing with their phones during orientation, for example). We have to deliver a speech and go through an interview next month, then they pick four finalists. The finalists all get cash prizes, but they also go through another round of interviews to pick a final winner. The winner is announced in December.
• Regionals: The top student from each of eight schools in the region compete in March. More interviews and speeches, and three go on to state championships (so three out of eight, that's almost a 50-50 chance!).
• State championships: Held in April, there will be nine of us competing (three from each of the three regions). There will be more interviews and speeches, and the winner gets a new car as well as free travel to events over the course of the next year that he/she is expected to speak at. This person will be marketed extensively to help advertise technical education.

There will be a lot of networking going on at each of the three levels, and it's also a really good thing to put on a resume, so at the very least this is a good opportunity to get my foot in the door with some companies that might be looking to hire. However, I'd like to ask the CS community for some advice on a couple of things.

-My speech. I have it written out and it's actually really nice, but we get bonus points for memorizing our speeches at the school level, and the same speech HAS to be memorized for the regional and state competitions. I've never been good at memorizing large bits of text (or really any text at all- ask me to quote a book, I dare you), so does anyone have any tricks for that? Would it maybe help to write bits of it on notecards and memorize them one notecard at a time, or something like that?

-Interviews. With my anxiety, interviews have never gone well. Usually I end up shaking from nerves before I even get in the door and no matter how prepared I am otherwise, it never goes well. I'm really hoping not to utterly tank the interview portion but with something as high-anxiety as this (even without underlying anxiety problems), nothing I normally do will help. Any ideas on how to make it easier?

[greek_jester]

With regards to the memorising, don't try to do it all in one go. Learn the first sentence, repeat it again and again until you've got it perfect, then add the next sentence. Again, keep repeating until you've got both sentences down. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This does take a while, but it does sink in.

[mjr]

I'd second what greek_jester suggests, as well as possibly look into mnemonic devices.

As far as the nerves, is there maybe some calming exercises or Tai Chi or breathing exercises you could do to calm yourself? Perhaps treat it as you're just going to talk to a good friend. I can't really provide much advice there, and I really don't want to steer you the wrong way.

Best of luck, though! I hope you do well!

[Akasa]

A relaxation technique that my therapist has me working on mastering is one by one tense each muscle group in your body, then release.

See how that works for you.

[Aragarthiel]

A small update to this. I found out yesterday that anyone who wins at regionals gets a scholarship for a Bachelor's degree, in previous years it was for DeVry but we don't know what it'll be this year.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

Memorization - don't memorize the whole speech. If you get distracted or lose focus for a second you want to be able to recover. Try to memorize one paragraph or thought per chunk. If you lose your place repeating one or two sentences is not too bad.
Write a song of your speech, or if you're not at all musical a chant even. Songs are magical memorization tools. I could probably still do all of dozens of songs I haven't heard in decades.
Interviews - I fully understand the anxiety, I have it in spades, and a lot of how well I do depends on the interview. If they are good I lose nervous mode and go into conversation mode, and my enthusiasm for my work comes out. If they are not good, then I suck it up. BUT, I've learned that if they are not good it's usually because they are nervous. If your interviewer is nervous it means two things 1) nobody else probably had a great interview either and 2) they are probably trying not to do something stupid, which means they don't have enough energy left for serious judging you.

Try to make yourself a goal of mentioning three work related things you are very good at or love doing during natural points in the interview. Anything you are enthusiastic about is naturally going to be presented better than anything else.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Go through things one section at a time so you know roughly in your head what's coming up next- 'the next paragraph is the anecdote with the jam doughnut..then it's the tips to avoid being kidnapped,then the story with the hamster and the Easter egg.'If you know the next bit,you can be mentally ready to go into it.If you're getting flustered or can't think what's next,then you can slow down-take your time-look around the room-set your own pace.

And the bods watching you don't know what your script says word-for-word.As in acting,if you can't remember the exact words,then go with something similar and be confident-if you announce 'Good morning.It's a lovely day and I'm really pleased to be here',the audience won't have a clue that your script actually says 'Hello everyone.I'm so pleased to see you all this morning'.Going...er...um.. or just stopping blank or worst saying 'that's not right...er no that's not it' will attract their attention.

Smile at them.You will find that hopefully if you get a good rapport going,any nerves will disappear.

[morgana]

Another good memorization strategy: record yourself reading the speech, then play it back any time you have even one spare minute. This enabled me to memorize an SCA ceremony over an hour long, in which I was one of two speakers. (My Coronation, for the SCA folks here.)

[Aragarthiel]

So my interview's tomorrow, and while I appreciate all of the advice (and even tried all of it), I seem to have figured out a way to do this by taking advantage of how my own memory works.

My mind seems to have separated the paragraphs, and within each paragraph I (unintentionally) wrote the first few words of each sentence differently. As long as I can remember those first few words, my brain seems to be able to fill in the rest to a satisfactorily accurate degree. I'm not able to practice it out loud very much for various reasons, but I've found that writing it instead seems to be helping, and if I get stuck I go back, look at what's next, try to remember those first few words, and begin writing it again at the beginning. I'm trying to get to the point where I can write the whole thing out at least three times, because by then the sheer repetition should have helped me memorize most, if not all of it.