How does one incorporate larger words into their vocabulary?

First, read a lot. Find anything at all you find interesting to read, and make a point of reading during your quiet times. Many advanced vocabulary words are rare in speech and are mostly met in reading.

Second, try to hang out with people who have interesting topics of conversation. College areas -- not just the campus, but the bookstores and cafes and pubs around them -- are places to meet interesting people. Listen first, and join in when you have something useful to say.
You can also get into the classroom without being in a diploma program and get a start -- audit courses without taking them for credit (still costs you but less pressure), take non-credit classes given for personal interest, and sign up as adult student and take courses in arts etc.

The thing NOT to do is to memorize dictionary definitions and try to shove long words into your conversation by brute force. This always sound artificial and makes you look less intelligent, not more, when you misuse or mispronounce a word.

That's OK. There is a great shortage of good listeners. If you listen five times as much as you talk you'll learn a lot and make tons of friends.
Reading Clinton is great -- he has a good vocablary and expresses himself well.

Hmmm.... I wouldn't define it as successful in my book. (If true, then any world leader from Ghandi to Stalin could be called "successful.")

Consciously thinking about words and waht they mean, and using them is a real key. When something happens or you see something, mentally think of words that describe it, and dredge deeply for interesting words already in your vocab - and then read to try to pick up more. When you read an interesting word, even if it's one you already know, look for deeper meanings to it. Make sure you're seeing what the author means.
I'm thiniing of some of my students now, who tend to simplify meanings as they read higher-level material. We had an article about "The Internet as a social phenomenon" and it was talking about the general effect on society (this was before "facebook" and the INternet as a social venue at all), and had a line about "posturing" business men... the student reading it interpreted social to mean friends-talking, and "posturing" to mean "how you stand" and made similar oversimplifications... she really didn't understand the reading because of it. (She did better after we'd straightened that stuff out.)

Sue J, webmastress www.resourceroom.net

I certainly don't consider his presidency to be a success at all, I meant what I stated in a sarcastic sense.

I'm doing this for personal advancment, but I wonder sometimes though- if the reason I have such a hard time conversing, is because of an intrinsic condition.

Another thing to do is to read stories *slowly* and savor the vocabulary. Taste the words.

Read "closely" -- here's a good example

http://home.earthlink.net/~hiflyer/APbradbury/twcsr.htm

The f wrd... there's a song about that by Lou & Peter Berryman (anothe rgood source for diverse vocabulary, by the way - see
http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/pages/tiFWORD;ttFWORD.html

Gosh, that's definitely as bad as saying "Like" every other word... though I suppose not in *every* setting in life! Guess it would depend whether you were in a Valley Girl or Home Boy setting... hmmm.... now I'm trying to figure out whether any males I know are "like-a-holics," or females are stuck with the f word ...

Sue J, webmastress www.resourceroom.net