Public Speaking

 

When I was in school, occasionally a teacher would inform us that we would be required to do some kind of assignment (a book report or some such) and when we were finished, we would be required to give an oral report to the class. I cannot begin to tell you how much anxiety this put me through. If said oral report was a month away, I had a month of torture (self-torture). I guess I was envisioning all the ways it could go wrong, and how I would make a fool of myself. As soon as a teacher would announce it, I would start getting that feeling in my stomach, like I had just swallowed a bunch of lead weighs. I would think about it every night.

Anxiety. I probably didn’t know what that word meant back then, but anxiety and I were fast friends.

The day would eventually come and I would walk up to give my report, shaking. Somehow, I would get through it and the anxiety would drain away, at least until the next time. Sometimes when I didn’t even have an oral report scheduled, I would worry about the possibility of one of my teachers assigning one. Yeah, I had it bad.

But as I was making my way through my final years of high school, I came upon the realization that I wanted to become a teacher. Do you see the logical inconsistency here? I apparently didn’t. What was I thinking?

As I began college life, I was taking all the basic courses that everybody had to take, but I had an eye toward classes that I would need if I wanted to be a teacher. One class sat ominously in my future. Speech. That was a class I was going to have to take at some point but I tried to live in denial. I didn’t have to take it my first year, so that was a long way off, right? Eventually I found myself in the second year. I put off Speech until Winter term, but it was coming down to the wire. I was going to have to take it. I signed up for the class with dread. Maybe, I thought, I could start the class but drop it before I had to give my first speech. Then maybe I could put it off another year. These are the kinds of things that go through your head when you are an anxiety ridden basket case like I was.

The first day of class came and I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. Just remember, you can quit before your first speech. That was what I kept telling myself. That kept me going. We all sat down for the first class, and the professor said, “Find the person sitting next to you. I want you to interview each other. You just have about 3 minutes each. Then each of you is going to come up and tell us at least three things about your neighbor. Go!”

My stomach dropped further. I hate this, I hate this. I hate this, I kept thinking. I am dropping this class as soon as I can! Somehow, I managed to make it to the second class, tension in my neck. The professor got up and said, “unfortunately the last class ended and everybody left before I had a chance to say this: For all of you who were planning on dropping this class before you had to make your first speech, too late. You already made one. And that will be the toughest speech you have to give. You had to interview someone you didn’t know and with no research and almost no preparation, you all gave credible speeches.” Huh. Tricky. I looked around and realized how many others were like me with the same anxiety I had, and we were all feeling a little better about this class. And it was nice to know that I wasn’t alone, that others had the same feelings that I had. Over the course of the term our professor gave us helpful tips and strategies. The speeches that I gave in class wouldn’t win any awards, but they weren’t bad and I managed to do them without turning into a basket case each time.

That class that I had so hated the idea of taking, changed me. It made the dream of becoming a teacher, attainable (even though that was not where I ultimately wound up). A few years after college I got a temporary job for the Forest Service Leading nature walks, giving talks and presentations to campers. I loved that job! Yet a few years earlier, that would have been unthinkable. Public speaking no longer held any terror for me.

Not long after this I started acting in community theater; actually acting in front of a crowd of people. Though, for an introvert, that’s not as hard as it sounds. If you are acting, you are putting on a character. It’s not you that is making a fool of yourself, it is the character. Still, getting over my public speaking phobia helped ease me into theater. I have been in probably fifty plays over the last thirty years.

Because of one speech class in college, (a class that I didn’t want to take) a world of opportunities opened up for me. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine the impact that one class, or one person can have on your life.

Star Liner