I kind of forgot what it was like to speak in front of a class. I remember in high school that I would have weekly presentations that would always scare me to death. Known as glossophobia, as many as 77% of people have some level of public speaking fear according to the journal of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.
I still do public speaking in both work and in school, but I remember being petrified in high school. I guess I’m a more experienced public speaker now, but I think there’s more to it. Just from my own intuition, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that in high school (or at least in my high school) all of my classes were back to back, meaning there was no time to prepare once you got to school. You had to do all of your prep the night before. In college you most likely have the ability to prepare up until the time of the presentation. Also, the expectation was that you had to fit a certain amount of content in a presentation and if the exact content wasn’t mentioned your grade would suffer.
In reality, the best practice is to say as much as you can in as little words as possible. I remember having to write pages of text to present in class with all of this dense content. I was anxious because I wanted to make sure that I remembered and said all of the points correctly. I now realize that the most important thing is to ensure that you can say all you need in 15-30 seconds. Most people’s attention spans don’t go further than that. I think people would be more confident about public speaking if the emphasis was placed on concision instead of content density when we first start public speaking.
I think it is interesting that public speaking is such a common fear. Unfortunately, it is something that needs to be practiced. I remember loving public speaking in high school, since I was involved several extracurriculars where it was a part of it and found it exhilarating. But, now that I do little public speaking in my major, my anxiety towards it has completely returned.
What a dilemma, having free speech and being too afraid to exercise it! You raised a great point I won’t forget, “say as much as you can in as few words as possible.” It is so important to keep that in mind, especially in situations in the “real world” similar to your high school where time is limited for preparation. Keeping your audience’s attention span is so important and I’ve mentioned it in another comment on your blog, even keeping your posts short is a sure way to keep your readers engaged! Love your work here, Luis!
This blog post is so relevant! Public speaking is something that is so incredibly daunting but necessary for almost any industry. In high school I was on the speech and debate team and I quickly found my niche in speech. I would write speeches and compete and slowly the fear went away each time. With last year’s classes on zoom it was a bit challenging to get back into the swing of things in terms of in-person public speaking. But just as you said, public speaking can be scary - but it shouldn't be!
I found this blog very interesting. Last year I actually took a public speaking class so every week I had to do a speech in front of the class. I relate to this because growing up I was always timid of speaking in public but I have gotten better at it since I've practiced. Sometimes you can think too much because you may think no one is paying attention and that your boring.