#127
Icebreaker speech - Paradigm Shift
Script:
I recently heard of a book named personality isn’t permanent, written by a psychologist. Its title reminded me of how different I was as a person 15-20 years ago and the kind of person I am today.
Fellow toastmasters and guests, a very good evening to all of you. Today I’d like to share with you my transformation from a shy introvert girl at the age of 4 to a not-so-shy, not-so-introvert anymore woman at the age of 24.
Being the only child, I was the centre of my attention among my parents, my neighbours and my cousins. We lived in Mumbai with my grandparents. Isn’t growing up with grandparents fun? New stories every day! I’ve learnt so many new things from the stories my grandma would tell me from Ramayana, Mahabharata, Panchatantra and Aesop’s fables.
When I was in school, apart from my friends, I also cherished the company of Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha, Tintin, and my favourite, Enid Blyton books.
As a young voracious reader, I loved language and words. Not surprisingly, I played Scrabble at an advanced level right from the age of 5 and have won many accolades.
An interesting contrast was when I wanted to engage in a physical sport and I enrolled in my school basketball team, where I represented my school at the district level. Being a team sport, I learnt the discipline of training and practising together with the other girls in my team.
Somewhere around the 12th grade, deep down, I felt I needed to be more outgoing. So, I made up my mind to pursue engineering in a college outside my home city. It was a bold decision for both me and my parents, but i saw it as a way to develop myself and become independent. I was thrilled to bits when I got admission in computer science at BITS Pilani in Hyderabad.
That was one of the best decisions I ever made. It was an inceptive stage of my life. The first time I entered the campus, it was as though a new person emerged out of me - the extrovert Sriya. Waiting to explore. Waiting to experience. Waiting to experiment. It was a complete paradigm shift.
That girl who hesitated to speak to new people was now talking to lots of new folks AND making new friends? What!?
My best friend Shirin would get tired of walking with me all the way from the hostel to the academic block for attending classes not because of the distance, but because I would start chatting with several people along the route.
In the spirit of experimentation, I volunteered to be part of different clubs and departments. Because I liked languages, I joined language clubs such as English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, and my mother tongue Telugu. I also discovered my penchant for photography and worked my way to becoming the head of the department.
I also played inter college table tennis and, winning tournaments helped me boost my confidence to the next level.
I thought my transformation was complete and permanent. But then came placement season. I realized parts of me still needed development. I didn’t do too well in interviews because I would clam up and not express myself effectively. Fortunately, we also had opportunity for doing internships, and I landed at Amazon Chennai as a software developer.
I worked hard to give it my all to get a job offer. 5 months later, Lo and behold! I rejoined as an employee in July of 2017, and I decided I’d strive to do well not only at work but also in other aspects.
What am I talking about? I decided to test the extent of how confident I had become and went ahead and asked this guy Akhilesh whom I knew and liked for about couple of months out on a first date. Well what do you know - he said yes! And he kept saying yes to many such dates with me after that, and even today, we go out on 'dates' as husband and wife.
Finally coming to this year, I’ve continued experimenting in the lockdown period. I started 3 blogs, one on finance and investments, one on book summaries and a casual one. I’ve also tried to develop my culinary abilities and tried my hand at baking. I also got some time to introspect and figure out what truly makes me happy.
One of the major milestones for me this year was obviously joining Toastmasters. It was something I had been putting off time and again because the shy girl in me kept saying I couldn't do it. There was no way I’d be able to give a speech in front of so many people staring at me. Boy I’m just glad I could prove the old me wrong. And so wrong.
I’m happy to have finally broken the ice, not just for my toastmasters speech, but in life as well, between the new me and every opportunity coming my way.
Thank you for listening. Over to you toastmaster of the day.
Video:
Participated in the ice breaker contest and was declared the winner: https://youtu.be/97ZzWkgWmyc?t=1403
And I got to give the speech again in the 600th milestone meeting as well: https://youtu.be/shXsH5YaZKI?t=659
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