She had mentioned on a discussion board her struggles with social anxiety, and it didn't take powerful deduction skills to guess that this assignment would be outside her comfort zone. After replying to her with some practical advice about finding an interview subject, I couldn't resist sending a postscript offering her encouragement a short while later.
A is young, probably no older than 21, and I felt an almost maternal urge to nurture her. She reminds me so much of myself at that age. I wanted her to know that tasks that seem insurmountable can become doable with practice and repeated exposure.
I ought to know. I've written before about my past struggles with school, both socially and academically. I'm the latest of bloomers, still working on opening up fully.
For so long, I was afraid to make my voice heard. I had a speech impediment (that tricky letter R) that stuck with me through the beginning of high school. The funny part was I couldn't hear it myself (except, to my utter mortification, at the odd time I'd hear my own voice recorded), but my classmates certainly could and teased me for it. In junior high, I wished I could disappear and literally hated to talk.You can throw me in with the crowd that fears public speaking more than death. I quickly read through my speeches in high school, eyes glued to my note cards. In college we were assigned to give an impromptu speech based on a topic we'd drawn at random. It was brief, but I stammered and panicked through my first attempt. I didn't make the time limit. I asked the professor if I could please just take an F for the assignment. She wisely refused. I made it through my second attempt, though I did little better than the first.
As I began to study journalism, I quickly discarded the idea of ever becoming a reporter, so nervous was I to make contact with new people. What if I sounded stupid or said something ignorant? I accepted, with comfort, that the copy desk was the place for me.
In interviews, I tend to fizzle. How long should I maintain eye contact? How should I hold my hands? I get so nervous, it's hard to act natural. I live in terror that the interviewer will ask me a question for which I don't have an answer. What do I do then? Perhaps my nerves about speaking in front of others have led me to hone my writing skills. If only I could submit my interview answers in writing!
As I've gotten older, a little, but not enough, has changed. I'm a proficient small talker and can chat up strangers with ease, one on one. Icebreakers, oh stupid, awful, icebreakers, still send me into a cold sweat. At our wedding, I wished I could have the nerve to take the mic and thank our guests at our reception, but at the last minute I fell back and left it to Mark.
Just months ago when Gus began kindergarten, I was at a loss as to what to do with my life. A big part of me resisted going back to school, but perhaps I was drawn to it like a Rosetta stone. Even as I signed up for courses, I nursed serious doubts, but maybe subconsciously I knew it was what I needed.
This semester I've grown in ways I couldn't have imagined. I beat back the urge to drop a class that intimidated me, and to my amazement, it has become one of my favorite classes. Each assignment I complete, I feel empowered. I never expected to mock up my own webpage, but I'm working on doing just that, and I'm actually having fun with it.
My biggest test will come in about two weeks when it's time to present my final project to my marketing class. I know that my classmates probably will barely listen to me, so focused will they be on their own upcoming presentations (or surreptitiously looking at their phones beneath the tables, if it's like a typical day). Consciously and perhaps subconsciously, I've been nudging myself toward this final goal all semester, volunteering answers in class, often acting as the representative for my group. I feel nervous yet capable of what's to come. I can do this.
When I was doing speech therapy for my impediment, one of my assignments was to say my exercises into a tape recorder. Even in the confines of my own bedroom, I felt embarrassed. This all came full circle when for my final project for my professional communications course, we had to create and narrate a screen capture.
I sat on the floor of my bedroom, speaking my script into the laptop balanced on my thighs. The sound of my nasally voice still made me cringe a bit (does anyone on earth not hate the sound of their own voice?). The Rs floated effortlessly off my tongue, though. I sounded competent and felt confident in my abilities, and maybe for the first time ever, I embraced the sound of my own voice.
