Write Your Untold Story- A Writing Challenge

Journey of overcoming fear of public speaking and transforming into a better version of myself

Photo by Dámaris Azócar on Unsplash

While growing up, I had low self esteem. To top it, I studied in an all girls school until grade 10. “Cut to University, second year” and there I was — being told that presentations would be a major part of our grades. Public speaking! With boys[unknown species] in the audience!

Let me give you a bit of a background of my life then

My University was in a rural part of India, Punjab. Females were not even allowed to wear western outfits. This was challenging and uncomfortable for me. I hardly had any Indian wear[kurtas/salwar kamiz] in my wardrobe so I managed with around 2–3 dresses, I bought in hurry before moving to university residence. I was the odd one out in my class because the rest of the girls had a plethora of Indian dresses. I used to feel under dressed every day until my first year. I was also trying to adjust to a life away from my family. Independence for me meant taking up more responsibility and I was quite lazy to like that initially.

By second semester, the institution started following segregated seating arrangements for male and female students. While this new policy was collectively disliked and often discussed informally among classmates, but no one opposed it openly. Personally, I felt a sense of relief and comfort in the arrangement, although I never revealed this to anyone. The reason for my relief was obvious. There was one less thing to worry about- dealing with this alien species[boys] in the same classroom setting.

Beginning of my third semester/ second year, there were two new changes waiting for me. One was the announcement I mentioned in the opening of my story- Presentations… and the other was a new admission of a guy named, Manik Jolly.

Manik was super confident and super interested in me. I secretly envied the former yet expressively hated the latter. How I wished I could be as confident as him. One day, our Pharmacognosy professor asked if anybody could volunteer to discuss an ad hoc topic in front of the class. No wonder, he volunteered. He came and stood in front of the class with dripping confidence. He was wearing a blue checked shirt. I was seated in the front row towards one corner. He started speaking while addressing the class and after a few minutes, he was making frequent eye contacts with me. I thought to myself, I can at least handle that! When he can stand out there, facing the entire class and the professor, I can manage to seem confident, while conveniently sitting and facing, just him. Guess what! He seemed to have forgotten the presence of the entire class and was just looking at me. We were not friends. We exchanged a quick hello without any formal introduction a few days ago and he was behaving as if I am his only friend in the audience. I was amazed at his confidence. First of all, being a new student, he volunteered. Secondly, he is confident about his delivery and thirdly, he is managing to have an eye contact with the girl he is interested in! How could he manage so much! And me? I took it as a challenge. Was it really a challenge? Afterall I was just an audience! Anybody in the audience could manage to look at the speaker directly and confidently into the eye. The challenge is actually for the speaker. Can you believe it? I lost!! I felt like a looser when I finally broke the eye contact and looked down. I don’t know about his feelings but it was not at all romantic for me. I felt devastated because I wanted to be a good audience member, if not a great presenter. I was even more stressed now to face the class. I was constantly asking myself, “How will I mange to face the entire class when I could not even face him as an onlooker?” I was thinking ways to skip the presentation. The entire class was now aware of his qualities and his interest. I am sure he had no clue, who he was dealing with. I had no interest in him. My focus or interest was only to be a good orator. [By the way we became friends by the end of the second year, just friends]

That day, all students were assigned different topics. Since it was just a practice session and exams were approaching, priorities changed until the beginning of the third semester. We were supposed to provide presentations based on our learnings during one month training in a pharmaceutical industry.

I practiced very well for my presentation. I didn’t even rely on the material to read anything. I had it all memorized. Now the challenge was to face the audience with confidence as my preparation in terms of content was good.

At that time, we never had Youtube, ChatGPT or google. We used to rely only on books or past experiences/trainings. I went to the library to search books on public speaking. I got some cool tips from them[Still remember them]-

1. Speak clearly with minimum filling words
2. Use the entire stage and try to engage everyone in the audience by making eye contact
3. If you feel, making eye contact is difficult for you, just look at the heads, it gives a false feeling that you are looking into the eyes
4. Have a confident body language
5. Do not make fidgety movements which will cause distraction for the audience
6. Lastly, your mindset is very important. Think that everyone in the audience is a fool. You know better than all of them. rather you are here to enlighten them :)

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It was 2002 and we used to have a projector set up for delivering the same and just before my turn the projector broke. The guy before me somehow managed without the slides showing up. I panicked and was trying to think of a solution but my mind froze. Just then, someone gently tapped me on the shoulder from behind. It was Manik. He was seated towards the last row and came in front just to give me a quick advice. Since the last episode we had a few friendly, yet very short chats. He wanted to help me as he might have noticed my stress. He suggested me to manually keep the sheets on the white screen, just for explaining the map of the industrial set up [which needed visual aid to grasp] and for the rest of the presentation, I could manage by verbal explanation only. It was actually a great advice. i was really grateful. I followed the same.

I started the presentation. My heart was beating fast but I continued. After explaining the map keeping the OHP sheets against the white screen [which made the visibility easier] which was luckily visible even from the last rows. Later, I kept everything aside and went ahead with verbal explanation. I remember, using the entire stage to walk while talking and I was very confident with my body language. I made sure I sounded loud and clear. Somewhere in the middle of the presentation, I felt as if something else took over me. I was feeling confident and happy and I was enjoying the process. Me enjoying?? On the stage!! Well yes! I felt gratitude that these group of people are paying all their attention to me, as if they have lent me their precious time. I felt a sense of gratitude and responsibility. I was feeling excited and enthusiastic while delivering my presentation. There was a noticeable glimmer of pride in my professor’s eyes. The entire panel of professors seemed happy with my presentation.

Later, I started making eye contact with my classmates [to engage them] while speaking and I was absolutely comfortable with that. Just then, I noticed Manik Jolly. I held my eye contact a little longer. He leaned in front, while I did that in order to signal that…. “Ok, I’m ready, lets do this! Today the roles are reversed.” His best friend, Prahlad noticed us doing this. He was pretty much aware of what happened earlier when he was the speaker. It felt like a competition where either of us were not willing to give up. I continued looking straight into his eyes, with an ease and confidence while pacing to and fro. After a few moments, he felt a little uncomfortable and suddenly raised his eye brows and looked down, finally giving up. He felt a little overwhelmed, not sure why. Noticing this, his friend started laughing, clapped silently and gave me a thumbs up. I couldn’t help but smile at him. That moment, felt like a win! Not a win against Manik but a win against an older version of myself who didn’t believe that she could ever achieve this!

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