District F Championship Round - Part 4 of 6

I asked the other two winners of the contest to add their thoughts to mine on preparing their evaluation before taking the stage. Here are our answers...

Barbara Gordano - 3rd Place:
"Well, had I known I was speaking I would have mentally prepared! You see, I wasn't scheduled to participate in the Evaluation on the day of the contest; the winning Evaluator who beat me in the prior competition - for one reason or the other - did not turn up...lucky me! Jumping into the contest at the last minute was my greatest mental hurdle; it took all (of my) large sums of energy to keep my nerves at bay and I did so by constantly reminding myself to stay focused on the mission at hand - giving the best Evaluation to help my fellow Toastmaster grow."

Me - 2nd Place:
"For me, it was tough as this speech was not as clear as the speeches I evaluated at the Area and Division levels. Then it hit me. The reason the speech was not clear was because the speaker was not clear on what she wanted to accomplish with this speech. This was a persuasion speech mixed in with an information speech. Because of this the speaker did not achieve her goal, which was to take action. This insight was at the heart of my evaluation."

Julie Tang - 1st Place:
"Before the contest began, I reminded myself that I needed to select 2-3 strengths, and at least 2 things that the speaker could improve on. I also knew that my speech needed an introduction, a body and a conclusion. As I was taking notes, I wrote down strengths when I saw them and areas that the speaker could have done better on. One thing I didn't do was write every little thing down. I was quite selective on what I wanted to write down; otherwise, it would be too overwhelming for me. For the areas that needed improvement, I asked myself, "What advice would I give her that would benefit her the most?" and "How would I model that for her?" When we were brought outside to formulate our thoughts and organize our speeches, I carefully examined what I had written down. From there, I mentally made revisions that would give the biggest impact and rehearsed the outline of my speech as best as I could."