Week 9 Post 2

Experience does not look the same in every case. It is easy to look at a 14 year old beating a 19 year old at a national level speech competition and argue that experience doesn't actually play a role in how well and individual can speak publicly. In the case of Kay Rollins, it actually proves the opposite. Kay has been learning about public speaking for as long as she can remember and had more experience by the time she was a freshman than most people have when they graduate high school. The fact that she has been a tournament of champions finalist four times simply goes to show that her long term experience does make a difference. Her experience with coaching also proves that good work makes for good speakers. She has been getting coaching from Harry Strong, a man known for being one of the best coaches in the country for the last decade. That has allowed her to beat competitors, even ones like Juliette Reyes who have had the same number of years of experience as her but have had less or lower quality coaching.
Kay's journey in speech and debate proves that the ability to be a good public speaker is a skill and not a talent because she struggled when she started competing in high school speech and debate just like anybody else. If she actually had talent in speaking, and it wasn't a skill, she would have excelled and been winning tournaments from the very beginning of her journey. Furthermore, she said herself that speech is a skill and not a talent despite the fact that some speech impediments or lisps can be a problem someone is born with and can make people be considered worse speakers. The ability to be a good speaker can break through those problems through hard work and dedication making public speaking a skill, not a talent.