Presentation Update. Really quite dull.

No, I've been there. You're wanting to get out of the situation but at the same time terribly amused by it -- it's a useful defense! Otherwise you'd end up obsessing over it forever.

You are not going nuts but you obviously need to do a wee bit of work on that public speaking thing. The observing of the self while its fucking up is quite normal, finding it amusing is the best way around it.

I always think I'm really witty when I PS, but most of my laffs come from awkwardness and an odd confident/not confident style.

oh god, this just brings back my entire academic career! taking exams, giving seminars... please please please believe me that in, oh, 2 years time you will not believe that you were quite so scared. even my first Final Exam, before which i did not sleep a WINK and had palpitations and panics all the way through, is now a distant memory and i can't believe i was so worked up about it. go have some gin!

and well done for getting through it!

I'm glad it's over. I don't feel like how I expected, but that's probably because it gave me a headache. I did at one point announce 'This is an awkward silence. It will be over in a minute'. And, it was an awkward silence. My intention is never to do any PS ever again. Why is it an important skill? If it was that important I'd be fine with it. I wonder what mark I got.

Average marks I'd guess. Go and get a drink.

Gin. I must find a respectable London Bouzery. No. Perhaps I should remember I have work tomorrow. Ah, but GIN.

There's an acting exercise called "Private Life" where you have to convince a room full of people of something that's purposefully almost impossible - i.e. a black man convincing a room full of white country club members to admit him to the club; or a Disney executive convincing NASA to pay for the cost of giant mickey ears that would be visible from space, etc. You have to talk for 5 minutes then answer questions for 3. It is the most gruelling thing I've ever done. The NASA example of above was my idea; about halfway through I had white flashes in my vision and my "agenda" was shaking like a leaf in my hands. I was relieved to get to the question period, but little did I know that my (actor) audience would be so aggressive and hostile with their questions that I'd feel like I'd been punched in the gut. When it was over I was breathing hard and completely out of sorts. It took an effort of will to remember anything I'd said.

lessons learned: 1) get what you're trying to convince people of out of the way at ONCE. otherwise they will be suspicious and yr anxiety will grow as you approach that fateful moment. don't avoid "the difficulty". 2) likewise, when someone has a concern (can include boredom, detectable by loud snoring sounds) ADDRESS IT immediately and let them know that you are paying attention to them and taking them seriously. how applicable any of this is to your future situations i do not know but i am still PISSED that our instructor made us go through this humiliatingly evil experience BEFORE telling us these things.

That's what arguing on the Interweb feels like so you could do more of that too.

I always do the finding it amusing when I should be panicking and a small part of me is really really panicking thing. I was trying to read a computing paper the other day and I was just sitting there thinking, "Ha ha ha, lots of weird symbols, lots of maths, references to theories I don't know, phrases like 'obviously the worst case time complexity will be n log n' when it doesn't seem even faintly obvious, it's hysterical how little I'm understanding of this," and then I thought, "NOOOOOO!! Not funny! Very very bad! This is REAL LIFE!" and then I decided to give up and read something completely unrelated to my course and feel sorry for myself instead.

In fact this is much how all my attempts to work end up, although the ratio of hilarity to panic-filled attempts to think of ways to hack off limbs before the tutorial or whatever varies. Oh dear god, that's what I have to go back to next term. Rrrrrgkjhkjzhkl. But anyway. Er, sorry for going on for so long.

can i just say that i think alix is her own worst audience? she has high standards = good; she assumes she cannot live up to them = bad

i've given lectures which went well, and were i think good; lectures which were good but went down poorly; lectures which were a bit bad (either trying to repeat one i;d given successfully elsewhere, or once at a convention of the Anarchist Astronauts Association, where I was given the wind-up now signal after TEN MINUTES!); and the one which was attended by abt 9 bored students and which i myself got bored with abt half way through , except at the end of it someone came up to me and said, "You wrote a thing about Sonic Youth ten years ago, which changed my life and I've lived by those principles ever since" (then he seized my hand and gazed adoringly into my eyes).

OK, the "adoringly" bit is over-egging, but he was gratifyingly effusive and all I cd think was, "Oh no: I wrecked this poor guy's LIFE!"

On the other hand, I can't pick up a phone and call someone I don't know w/o three day's nerves, EVEN IF THE INTERVIEW IS SET UP AND KOSHER AND WHATEVER.

Tracer Hand's whole THEATRIXAL thing is a kind of untapped resource. I wonder if he will divulge more?

CAAAMpbell is kind of barking up the wrong tree. Basically, CAAAAAMpbell - you don't have a problem. I know this coz you said in previous thread that you Knew The Subject. If you Know it, then 0 to worry about. The rest is just readiness to go out and say it. You imagine that you don't have that readiness - but it will come, if you want it, if it's not there already.

MarkS is broadly on the money re. 'Speaking'. I think he and I kind of understand one another here.

Oh pinefox I may be a resource, but I am hardly untapped!