Nick Fisher showing a tattoo of his dad’s quote “Learn to love The Sunshine and The Clouds Equally.” (Photo by: Baptiste Raffin)

The Spring 2025 Stine Speaking Showcase was held on April 16. This edition of the showcase, in which the best speaker from each public speaking class competes, was won by psychology student Nick Fisher. 

The showcase started with seventeen students who went through two rounds of semifinals. At the end of these two rounds, five were selected to compete in the final round. Professor Kaila Todd, who is on the Showcase planning committee, declared that there was a three-way tie to determine who the fifth finalist would be, and that the judges had to go to the second tie breaker. 

During the final round, each finalist presented their speech in front of a jury made of Kate Allen, JCCC’s Vice President for Advancement, Shelli Allen, JCCC’s Vice President for Student Success & Engagement, and Dr. Gurbhushan Singh, JCCC’s Vice President and Chief Academic Officer. 

The round started with Nadia Kershner who presented her speech The United States Constitution, the Strongest Document in History. She was followed by Ty Nguyen and his speech Wired for Success, during which he talked about the importance of networking. Bryan Tumlinson presented his speech Plages, Panic, and Progress, followed by Alexis Mijares and his speech titled What is AI and how does it work. Finally, Nick Fisher presented his speech Learn to love The Sunshine and The Clouds Equally, which is a quote from his dad who committed suicide in 2022. 

After the speeches and while the organizers were tabulating the votes, the audience got to play a game of fun facts about JCCC, and after about twenty minutes, Professor Kaila Todd came back with the results:

• In fifth and fourth place (in no particular order) were Bryan Tumlinson and Alexis Mijares, who both won a $100 scholarship.
• In third place, Ty Nguyen won a $175 scholarship.
• In second place, Nadia Kershner won a $250 scholarship.
• And the winner, Nick Fisher, received a $300 scholarship. 

(Photo by: Shayna Mitchell)

We were able to talk with Fisher, and ask him what winning the showcase, with a speech about how he dealt with his father’s suicide meant to him. 

“It feels really good. I wasn’t really expecting to win,” Fisher said. “The thing that I wanted to do with my speech is really just to share it. I don’t really care about the money. I don’t really care about the scholarship I get from it. Honestly, my dad’s death has been something that I have wanted to talk about publicly for a while because I’ve learned a lot from it. Obviously I wouldn’t have been able to do it, you know, right after his death. But it being almost, we’re a little bit over two and half years now. At this point, I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve, you know, kind of gotten through the whole process and at this point I was really happy. I just was really excited to just share what I could learn [with] people, no matter how many it was.” 

On the topic of his speech, Fisher told us that he knew from the start that it was what he wanted it to be about. 

“I knew in the exact moment,” Fisher declared. “The moment he [Justin Stanley, his Public Speaking professor] said he wanted us to perform something that was impactful in our life. I mean, there’s no bigger moment in my life that’s more impactful than that.” 

Fisher believes his speech changed from when he performed it in class versus when he performed it for the showcase.  

“When I wrote it the first time, I actually wrote the entire speech the night before I was supposed to give it, and it was a lot different than this,” Fisher said. “And then throughout the last few weeks since I’ve been nominated, I tweaked it, made it more informative. It was more of a tribute story before, so I had to make it more informative, which I accomplished here.” 

Fisher also practiced in front of his girlfriend and in the car. 

“Practicing in front of my girlfriend was one of the biggest things,” Fisher declared. “And just practicing honestly. I won’t say that I was just hammering it in. But on the drive, like on the drive to school or like whenever I had this quiet time or I didn’t want to listen to music, I would just say what I could remember my speech to the point, and I would be like ‘What’s next?’ and then be like, ‘Oh, it’s this.’ And I would do that so many times in my car that it would just become this muscle memory. And then the notes, trusting my writing, just, that’s kind of how it all got here, was my ability to write it out well.” 

On what this experience brought him, Fisher said that it helped him grieve. 

“I would say it’s another step in my grieving process,” Fisher said. “I’m never going to stop grieving my dad, like it’s just gonna happen throughout my life. It has become a lot less painful, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t be able to talk about it up here if it wasn’t for that. But it felt like another form of closure in the sense not really of a stage of grief where it’s like all those main seven. It’s that stage, like I said, with the hole in the heart at the end of my speech. And talking about how that hole will never be filled except for love. I feel like I’m giving, like, love to people throughout this speech to help their lives, and I feel the love that I receive when people tell me how much of a good job I did. So it patches that hole that my dad’s death, while it sucked a lot of my life, I’m using it the best I can and doing the best I can with it, which really helps.” 

Fisher said that he would love to continue to talk about mental health.

“I don’t really know the whole path of getting there,” Fisher added. “I’m much better speaking off the top of my head than I am preparing it, and you know, just having all that stuff, I actually like the impromptus better. So I would love to just be, I mean, if podcasting wasn’t so big, I’d love to do podcasting stuff. I wish I could. I don’t really know the path into it. I’m hoping that, if I post [my speech], maybe I [will] get reached out to. That’d be awesome. But I’ll take any opportunity I can get. Speaking at schools, [or] speaking at, anywhere. I would love to just share stories about mental health because it’s truly my passion and I think it’s so important to talk about.”