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Public speaking

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Just writing this out makes dread wash over me.

Users of Bulbagarden, what do you think of public speaking - or delivering a speech to a live audience? Is this something you find enjoyable, or dare I say even fun? Or do you not care much for public speaking? Maybe it makes you anxious? Did you ever have to speak publicly, such as in school or university for a class, or at work? Discuss your thoughts on public speaking :enzap:
 
Public Speaking terrifies me. I can write speeches, I can do "power behind a throne", I just can't publicly speak. I have physical disabilities, and as such, not many will take me seriously. I often will be the last to speak in a room, with the most thought out insights, but I can't stand and speak, and I hate being brought out to speak in public.
 
I don't feel comfortable speaking publicly and two times I had to do a public speaking. One was for my graduation and it was required for every single person graduating to do a graduation speech. Second was for my grandma's memorial speech and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to handle it or not because I thought I would be crying just thinking about her and missing her.
 
I do get a little nervous when I have to speak publicly, but I think I’m pretty good at it. I think I tend to have a pretty commanding voice when I present something. I also tend to do better when I have a script prepared (which is unfortunately not often) so I can just focus on delivery instead of what I say next.
 
I often suck at public speaking, to the point my senior year of college, I had to take a public speaking class to help and was even granted a lot more public speaking efforts that year because of it. It did actually help, but it doesn't help I have major nervous stutter when in certain scenarios.

But now ironically for an introvert like me, I work retail (self-checkout no less) and my major dream job is librarian, so thanks to this my skills have developed especially since I've worked alone in a vast majority of my positions with barely any help so my skills have been forced to develop and have improved even if it some regurgitated garbage sometimes.

Now in interviews, I still stutter sometimes. Though if only I could get another one, it's been over a year since my last.
 
Archaic said:
I'm generally horrible in face-to-face social situations, but to me, public speaking is the opposite of a social situation. I'm much more comfortable delivering a speech than I am dealing with private discussions with peers after the talk.
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This is exactly how I feel! Public speaking is mainly just saying words, but conversation is a treacherous game of finding the next right thing to say and reacting appropriately and maintaining interest.
 
going to shake things up here. i LOVE public speaking. i've always had a knack for it. i prefer it to making small talk with people i don't know, partially because i feel more in charge of my own speeches than i do with conversations. if there's an event where i have the opportunity to give a talk or presentation, i am all over it. i did speech and debate throughout all of middle school and high school, so i did competitive public speaking for six years. my primary event in speech and debate was called impromptu speaking, which is like public speaking but you improvise it in less than five minutes. it's a weird talent i have that most people would never think about. i do public performances of my poetry too (i write original slam poetry), and that's always a blast for me. i live for the attention that comes with it honestly which is kind of ironic since i am very shy and introverted in most other contexts. i did theatre for a long time, but i found when i got older that i vastly preferred writing my own content to perform, so public speaking and i get along very well. i'm a writer who loves sharing their words aloud, so... yeah. i have fun. i like public speaking a lot. i understand why it's a big fear for other people of course since being up in front of people can be mortifying with all the eyes and judgement. i've always been really confident in my skills with it, and people have told me i'm very good at it too. so i guess my pride around it keeps me from getting too anxious? oops. i might have a brain disease because i enjoy this so much when very few others do, haha
 
Well. I consider myself a good writer, but I've always been a terrible speaker for a number of reasons. I guess I'm an unusual case in that I have a condition (vocal cord dysfunction) that makes it difficult to speak at all, and had even been to speech therapy sessions (to no avail) for when I was a teenager. Combined with social anxiety and generally poor social skills... yeah, giving speeches and presentations has always been both hard and nothing short of an embarrassment ritual for me. My physical condition is bad enough that some of my teachers actually gave me a pass from having to present in front of the class throughout school, which wouldn't have gone well anyway. But I do wish I was a good speaker, and maybe some day, I still could be. I feel like it is a valuable skill to have even if it can be intimidating for a lot of people. Getting better at talking to people in general - and developing good leadership skills - genuinely is something that I've been wanting to improve on for ages, haha.
 
i... i dunno how to feel about public speaking. i've done training classes before, both online and face-to-face (participated in a training class in this scenario), and while the latter was more nerve-wracking, it wasn't... a terrible experience? though it did open my eyes up a lot for what my former trainers went through when they trained us, lmao

at any rate, it's not something i want to go through because i have really bad anxiety. x:
 
I think my stance on public speaking is much more... neutral than everyone else here? Like, I can do it, and I might even enjoy it in the moment and after the fact, but I also don't really want to seek it out, because it's a pain and people are scary. If it needs to be done and I feel like I'm the most qualified to do it out of a group, I'll do it no problem, but if I'm next to someone who's really into it, I'm definitely not fighting them to get the spot.
 
I’ve been in theatre for about 3 years now so I’ve gotten pretty accustomed to speaking in front of people. However! The scariest part for me is knowing what to say. I don’t really like to go up with a script or else I’ll speak monotone.

I discovered recently that the key for me is to just practice beforehand. I can nail a speech if I have practiced it rather than improvising as I speak.

For me knowing the content of my speech is scarier than actually going up there. I can lie to myself that I’m not scared to go up there, but I can’t lie to myself that I know my content.
 
I'm not sure. I haven't tried it, but personally, I don't believe I'd be very good at it, lmao.
 
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