Voice Without Poise

I knew it. I am not meant for public speaking. I will never be able to fight stage fright. I never had, and never will have the guts. How I wish I did.

Just this week, I almost got the hang of Running Out Of Saliva, thanks to the speeches (impromptu and extemporaneous) that we had to well, deliver for the sake of our grades in Comm3. Oh, when combined, their weight in terms of percentage is more than the exams, mind you.

Impromptu was on Monday, Extemporaneous speaking on Thursday. That single fact of having to deliver two very important speeches in just a three day interval immediately sent shivers down my spine. Looks like it’s going to be quite a long week. And when I say it’s long, it’s going to be THAT long.

Speaking in front of twenty four people for just four to six minutes whom you know may seem easy, but discussing your viewpoints is like spending four to six hours in hell for me instead. The minute I stood up to talk in both cases, suddenly all of my sweat glands were perspiring drastically, thus proving that I was nervous. My heart beat could almost reach that of the Amethyst Woodstar Hummingbird out of my nervousness. (Still, you know I am just exaggerating, yes?) My mouth dries up, my voice falters, and my thoughts fail me for the nth time around. Even though I did manage to pull myself together gradually, I know I could do better. But, I just can’t. Again, how I wish I could.

I was second in the first batch to deliver in the impromptu speech, wherein as what I have told you in a not so recent entry, I do not trust what I say because I need more time. As we all know, this speech is well, delivered on the spot. You pick a topic from Pandora’s box, you take note of it, go outside, dig deep into your cerebral cortex and develop what you think is a sensible paragraph out of your thoughts while waiting for your turn. Since I do take a long time rambling through my thoughts, I wasn’t able to elaborate much about my topic, thus making my speech undertime. What does it mean? Deduction. Thankfully though, I still got a 1.5 despite of the minus. Hoo-ray.

In the extempo, I was supposed to be the third to speak in the second batch, though it turned out that I was second again due to a problem of the supposedly second speaker in her dress. We were supposed to wear a formal attire, and.. I don’t want to expound the story here. I’m here to emote about my speech, anyway. So let’s go on. Just as what I did in the impromptu (my professor told me so for the impromptu), I had a well developed entrance. A good sign? Not. Ten seconds of my precious time in front were wasted just because I was thinking of the follow up to the introduction. Bullcrap. Then, almost everything got ruined. Almost. At least I was able to end it well, and I did reach the time limit.

Once I (hopefully) finish Comm3, goodbye stage fright, goodbye. No more speeches, at least for me.

I just hope that good, if not high grades still await me after all that dillydallying in front of the class. What I do know, is that I am (relatively) far better at writing than speaking. 😉

‘Free’via: (In this blog’s terminology, it stands for free trivia; this will be included in selected posts starting now, and will be alternating with ‘strange-but-true’via in the coming days.)

According to a British law passed in 1845, attempting to commit suicide was a capital offense. Offenders could be hanged for trying.