July 11 Assignment - Elevator Speech

I do not have the capability of recording and posting the speech, but following is my transcript regarding my education and career plans:

I will receive my master's degree in library science to go along with my previous master's degree in public history. I would ideally love to use these degrees to work in an academic library, in a setting where I can perform a number of different responsibilities. I very much enjoy working with collections, for example, and I would love the opportunity to select and maintain materials, whether it is in special collections or subject librarianship. I also particularly like working with users and my ideal environment would include user education and reference responsibilities. I have had experience in many of these areas and I am looking forward to putting it to use.

With regard to my revision and delivery of this speech, I refined it through a combination of practicing it aloud in front of an audience and seeing how it looked on paper. It went through several iterations aloud, and as I was writing it, I realized that some of the things that sounded all right out loud were actually phrased awkwardly. Thus, spoken and written revisions were necessary for me to refine the speech.

Although I did not have a very harsh audience, I received compliments on the delivery and the content of the speech. I don't know if I will have the opportunity to deliver this exact speech to a potential employer, but creating and practicing it at least provided me with the chance to think through exactly what my career goals really are.