A Public Speaking Assignment Is A Cruel And Unusual Punishment
I presented my paper yesterday. It was filled with awkwardness, a dry mouth, a little bit of rambling, and a fast rate of speech. I went last, not to torture myself on purpose, but because everyone else was taking so long with theirs that I saw a golden opportunity of time running out and not having to go. The professor made everyone hold a stopwatch to keep it under 6 minutes, but my major is a 90% female population (literally. I know of only 3 guys: 1 is married with a kid, 1 is gay, and the other is short. Boo.), so obviously that wasn’t very effective. And if it wasn’t for finals week, my sad attempt at skipping out on speaking would have worked too (the next class after us had their meeting a half hour later than normal, so we got to stay the extra 30 minutes to get everyone in). That was 5% of my class grade, and I was having a serious debate with myself beforehand if that 5% was something I could afford to lose. I let out a dramatic sigh, sucked it up, and plowed through it in 4 minutes flat.
Example of how much I hate public speaking:
Spring of ‘06 back in undergrad, I registered for a class called “Communication and Aging”. There were a few reasons why I signed up: it was an elective, I heard it was a sleeper/filler class, and I wanted to pad my GPA a little. In the first class meeting I discovered the professor normally teaching it was on sabbatical and that we had a new professor, so red flags started popping up. I then opened up the syllabus and saw that 3 presentations were scheduled. 3. For a bogus class about geriatrics. so I quietly folded the syllabus, tucked it in my backpack, zipped it up, and slowly exited the room. I’d say that decision was easily in the top 5 best moves I made in college so far.
And one other note: I previously mentioned loving the topic of accent modification. Well, I researched accents and people’s reactions to them in my undergrad research classes, but since it’s not a speech or language disorder, I thought I should get a proper disorder to look into now that it’s the big show of graduate school. This chick in the class had her paper on the EXACT same thing I did back in Quantitative Research and Intro to Human Communications Research. I was initially stunned. I then quickly dumped the little intro story was I was going to tell about how I really liked accents but didn’t think it was appropriate for this class, so I found dementia instead. That would have been embarrassing had I gone before her.
I hate public speaking so much that my last presentation my hands shook so much that I couldn’t even read my note cards. Then my eyes started to water because I was so scared that I didn’t even remember to blink! The weird thing is I’m not a shy person at all but speaking infront of a large group of people paralyzes me. I think my teacher passed me because he felt sorry for me. Pfft whatever! I’ll take that pity C- grade with pride!