Research said that the biggest most common fear that all humans share are the fear of public speaking. Being under a watchful stare of handful of people, all waiting on your every word, trying to find one simple mistake. Myself, of course like every other people are somewhat afraid of public speaking. I am quite good in it, it’s just that if I don’t have to do it, I don’t want to do it. This is why for one of our assignments, where we need to present to our clients about our marketing plan, I threw the ball to one of my group mate instead.
Feeling great that I don’t need to perform the presentation, I spent the rest of the weekend making a list of potential questions that the client might ask.
I woke up on Monday morning with a loud ring of my phone, it was a sms. I am a light sleeper, just a tiny bit of change in the environment of my room can disturb me of my sleep, whether it’s sunlight penetrating my windows, whether it’s my housemate making breakfast, even waking up because the heater was turned on too warm. Well, I’m not gonna complaint about that trait, since the simplest of alarms will wake me up.
In my half dazed – half asleep zombie state I shuffled to my phone. Looking to see that I have received a new message, I prompt to read it immediately.
And now I wished I haven’t wakened up from my sleep.
“Ah fark.” I said to myself.
My group mate hasn’t recovered from her sickness, so she still lost her voice. And that means – I have to do the presentation.
More surprised than panic, I quickly went to my email and downloaded the presentation sheet that my friend has already made. I spent the rest of the morning trying hardly to rehearse the presentation without looking like a total idiot while in the same time trying to find my only pair of suit – because you have to look professional for the presentation, or so the tutor said.
Now I’m on a suit, on my way to campus. It’s one of those rare occasions where you can go to uni wearing a suit without someone going “WTF?” I had the perfect reason to go to uni wearing a suit, damn right it made me look professional, and I enjoyed every bit of that.
On to being panic, when I went to the corridor where the room that I was supposed to present is located, I felt a dread sweat forming on my brow. I felt a huge pain in the stomach, as if someone hit me with a baseball bat to the stomach, which releases clouds of little animals that dug into my belly and about to squirm out. Yeah, it was not the most pleasant of feelings.
1 Hour, 6 presentations later and now it’s our group’s turn.
I walked to the front of the classroom, showing every little bit of confidence I possibly can. I looked at the client and smiled and they smiled back – I need to show them that if any, I am confident. My group leader introduced us and I proceed to take the stage. I opened my mouth, gripping tightly the summary papers looked at the client dead in the eye, and spoke my piece.
It was the longest 10 minutes of my life. But it was over. The client gave their feedback, it was not bad, and our tutor gave us a feedback as well – not bad.
I heaved a great sigh of relief. It’s done.
Obligatory camwhoring session:
