Lost cause?

I’m looking forward to the 3-day course on public speaking I’ll be going on next week.

I hope I’ll be able to find out the following:

1) Whether I can do anything more than my current strategy which is just to force myself to do presentations in which not accidentally setting myself on fire is a real result;

2) The possibility of actually getting any better;

3) What an audience thinks of me.

My feelings are ambivalent on how much this will help. I’ve got through loads of presentations satisfactorily – the most terrifying were academic papers and my viva, so I at least have the notion that the scariest ones are all behind me to help. But I still get nervous, which sometimes inhibits my thought-processes. I get tongue-tied, my vocabulary goes AWOL and I have what can only be descrbed as out of body experiences. I gave a presentation last night and don’t remember a thing about it.

How much of that nervousness is just down to who I am? How much can change? And how much do I want it to change? I certainly don’t want to be a cocky sod, and though I don’t want to be peremptory, I’d like to instil a little confidence in my audience; you know, reassure them that I’m not going to throwing thing at them telekinetically.

Predictably, at the end of the course, we have to give presentations on a topic of our choice. Currently, I’m thinking of going meta and presenting on how I have such trouble doing it, but I’m sure I’ll have a real topic by next week…

Any tips gratefully received!

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