Anything But Cliché 
 

It’s 6:00pm on November 3. First-time Toastmaster, Leslie Smith, gets a feather in her cap when she announces that today is National Cliché Day. It was a foregone conclusion that the meeting would be a raging success. This club knows how to put its best foot forward.  

Janaky took one for the team, stepping up as Listener. Jim was a man of many talents, doing double duty as both Vote Counter and Evaluator. These club members go with the flow! 

We ran the gamut of experience in the prepared speeches. Lishi knew how to spin a yarn, earning the Best Speaker award for her Icebreaker! Her choice to pursue engineering might be cliché, but her speech was not. Reading between the lines (of code), she signed, sealed, and delivered an inspiring speech. She provided advice to ease the transition when moving to a new place. Lishi focuses on the positive. 

DTM, Sarfariz, proved that practice does make perfect in his speech on Understanding Leadership Styles. His discussion of 3 (Non) Leadership Styles: gestapo, rooster, and chicken was one for the books. Bawk, bawk, bawk! He used unforgettable phrases that had me rolling with tears of laughter.

 

Rebecca opened a can of worms with her Table Topics movie clichés (and their parodies). Bindu knows that tomorrow is another day and when life doesn’t go as planned it’s not the end of the world. Luis eschewed all the gym joints in the world to talk about the gym joints he prefers. Even I had the opportunity to participate in Table Topics, although Leslie’s Dolly Parton impression was a tough act to follow. 

I think Bindu stacked the deck with her team of Evaluators. Haritha and Jim put on their thinking caps to deliver evaluations that were not one-size-fits-all, rather positive and helpful with specific 
suggestions for improvement.   

This club is definitely standing on the shoulders of giants, but that’s par for the course with current and former district leaders as members. My hat’s off to you, Airport Toastmasters!