The apprenticeship challenge is designed to help young men get their first job or start a career path. Since I already have a job working at an orchard, I used this project as an opportunity to outline my skills, passions, interests, and helpful contacts as a roadmap to point me to career options.

My skills include communication, leadership, teaching, logical thinking/argumentation, music, and martial arts/physical activities. My passions lined up with my skills, which helped this process go faster. From there, I outlined problems or injustices in the world that I believe I can help solve by using my skills. The most important examples to me are fighting corruption in the justice system, defending laws and the Constitution, and educating others about these issues.

The six industries I listed as possible career paths were law enforcement, politics, teaching something I’m passionate about, law, construction, or a position working in an industry based on an interest, like firearms or music. I then took steps to narrow down the possibilities, and ended up deciding on law enforcement as my career goal. However, since there are very few to no opportunities in that arena for someone under 21, my plan is to work in construction to learn valuable skills until I can become an officer of the law.

This project was very helpful for me, as it made me stop and collect my thoughts to make a proper decision. To this point, I had been overthinking my future and putting off the process of decision making, but this challenge changed all of that. I’m looking forward to putting my plan into motion, even if it doesn’t work out exactly as I want. The important thing is that I’m ready and willing to take the first step when it comes to me.

Public Speaking Challenge

The public speaking challenge is important for everyone, no matter your communication abilities. You have to create a short speech on the topic of “Why I Want to Be a Leader” to be delivered in front of as large a crowd as possible. I am quite comfortable speaking in front of people, and have often done so. My largest crowd was around 150 people, and a good portion of the speaking I did was impromptu. Because of this, I was not heavily disappointed when I had to deliver the speech to a small group of brothers on a Zoom call instead of a live audience.

I thought this project was great; I enjoyed writing the speech and delivering it to my battle squad members. My only wish is that I could have delivered it to a larger audience, as a means of challenging myself more. Indeed, if I were scared of public speaking or in any way new to this kind of project, I would have waited to deliver my speech until I found a large enough audience. However, I’ve led and spoken to many groups of people over the years and quite enjoy it. It gives me no fear, only slight amounts of nervousness.

However, this project was still a good exercise for me, making me write something both applicable to me and hopefully to those who listen to it. I wanted to inspire with this speech, not just spend their time talking about myself. I think it was a success.

This link will take you to the written version of my speech: https://malachirsmith.com/?p=78