Toastmistress Journey - The Final Chapter

The rest of my final year is Toastmistress was good.  I was still learning, but many of the things I was learning were not things that I wanted to learn. 

The addition of this particular member brought a new level of nastiness to our debates.  I continued to learn poise and not to take things personally.  I became very tolerant and I don't know if that was the best lesson.  What is taught me was to repress my feelings and not to advocate for myself.  It was just a club so I let most things go unchecked.  In my future life, I let people walk all over me and advocated for others and not for myself.  I was taught to be poised.  Only one time did I address the nastiness.  At one point, I said, "The Chair is annoyed when you do that."  It was actually effective in the moment.  I should have shown more leadership.  Our club culture was changing and our meetings were not as well attended as they once were. 

We were disappointed in the International Organization.  We felt betrayed that they changed our name and they were talking about changing the program with minimal, if any, consultation.  They knew best, they said.  They had hired professional consultants.  We felt it was a slap in the face.  There was nothing wrong with our program.  We had all grown from it.  We didn't like the move towards Toastmasters as we felt if people wanted that, they would just join Toastmasters. 

I got to compete in one last speech contest.  There were 6 contestants.  The woman who had changed our culture drew speaker spot #1.  I drew spot #6.  Her speech was really good.  The next four speeches were good, but not really good.  I remember the two ladies who were most against me joining the club turning in their seats and looking back at me before I spoke.  Their eyes said, "ok, you are our last chance.  You must beat her."  I said back with my eyes, "don't worry, I've got this."

I won my third speech contest in a row.  Whoever was our Public Relations Chair did an amazing job of making this story half page long on Page 2 of the Dauphin Herald. 

A week before I graduated high school, I got my Past President's Pin.  I still cherish it today. 

I understand Toastmistress still exists, barely and has gone through many changes.  Speak Up.  Power Up.  I also was a Toastmaster for over a decade.  The organization struggles in North America and also keeps changing in order to attract new members.  All I know is that there were many good points of programming in each organization.  Perhaps if they had combined their programs and worked together things might have been different.