Do you remember your first class presentation?
Neither do I! I think I did several years of presentations before I got at all comfortable in front of the classroom.
Here’s a story for you: After years of being terrified about standing up to speak, I went to a local Toastmasters club. (A friend sent me.)
The next thing I knew, I was signed up for a “Table Topics” contest: each contestant gets a surprise question and has three minutes to answer.
Adrenaline!!!
The first question was: “What would you talk to President Obama about if you had an hour of his time?”
Unfortunately, politics has always been a foreign language to me. I didn’t have anything to say that was worth three minutes of the club’s time, let alone an hour of the president’s time.
Utter panic!!
Since everyone was smiling at me, I said the first thing that came into my head. “I would talk to the president about arugula.”
(A recent radio interview had revealed that arugula was the president’s favorite vegetable.)
With the whole room surprised and listening, I had to go on to the next sentence and tell them what arugula tasted like. “Toasted smoke” doesn’t make much sense, but I could see people trying it on for size.
From there, it was easy to talk about the presidential vegetable garden–gardening is my favorite hobby–and how to get Americans to eat more veggies and stay healthy. (I’m an epidemiologist–it’s what we do.)
After that, my nickname in the club was “arugula.” Veggies and public speaking were mixed up forever and I started to try and “say one thing” at a time.
Toastmasters taught me skills to overcome my fear
If you’ve ever thought about visiting a Toastmasters club, go for it! They’re very welcoming to visitors (kids too!).
Most of my books explore things that scared me as a kid (or as an adult 🙂 The funny thing about fear is that facing up to it makes it smaller.
Practicing with supportive people and learning an “ordinary skill” as the princess does in this book, can cut a terrifying fear of public speaking down to a less intimidating size.
“Speech or Die” is a really fun chapter in this book where the nameless princess visits the Toastmasters of her own kingdom!
Makes me smile just remembering it!
The book that grew out of a fear of public speaking:
With 14 brothers and sisters, this princess has a hard time getting a word in edgewise. Especially since she’d rather invent things in her dungeon workshop. So far, she’s even done without a name. When the castle is threatened, can she speak up in time?
