“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Spoken at his 1933 inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt reassured a weary American people with these famously simple words.
Amid seemingly inescapable economic failure and widespread fatigue, the United States’s newly elected leader struck a chord by reminding us why exactly the nation’s mess had snowballed -- because of the paranoia that comes along with an uncertain future. Sure, there were other, less controllable aspects of American upset in the '30s such as the mounting turmoil of World War II, high rates of unemployment and the halt of international trade (no big deal, right?). But the memorability of FDR’s words lies in widespread application. At the end of the day, the most agonizing or damaging part of negative experience is usually the fear and anxiety that preceded it. At least that's how it has been in my experience.
Fast-forward 83 years. It’s winter in downtown Charleston, South Carolina and even though the usually balmy southern air is chilled, the city’s college campus is bustling. There’s a girl apprehensively entering one of a quartet of glass doors out front of an old (but still standing!) brick building. She makes her way down the hall -- nervously “checking” her mobile phone all the way -- and enters one of a dozen identical wooden doors. Each has a single, tiny window-hole of bulletproof glass. She is awkwardly early and alone in the room’s whitewashed spotlight so she strategically chooses a seat that is toward the front but not too far from her comfort zone: one of the side-skirting walls. She is dread personified as people of all shapes and sizes eventually begin to pour into the little white box of a classroom. All are silent and, even though the girl had comfortably sat in so many of these rooms before, the white fluorescent lights feel brighter than ever.
That girl was me on the first day of my last semester as a college sophomore. Looking back as a senior now, that classroom and those people were, at the time, the culmination of all of my anxieties, my fears. In those first moments, I genuinely thought that signing up for that Public Speaking course in a fleeting moment of bravery had been a fatal mistake. I’m writing to tell you now that I was dead wrong and that my weeks and -- yes -- even months of worry over it was, ironically, my true bane.
Ol’ FDR was really onto something after all.
Public Speaking is a deep-seated fear for many; it is accordingly what I would have considered one of my greatest fears at the time. Despite having somehow publicly delivered a few important lines in high school as a National Honor Society officer at an induction ceremony and conquering many individual and group presentations through the years, I still struggled with projecting myself confidently before the judging eyes of an audience. My troll of a brain always deviously replayed the humiliating high school memory of me presenting a handmade project and my own researched ideas to the small and somewhat intimate audience that was my AP English class…stuttering. Floundering. Freezing altogether. Losing the ability to breathe. Apologizing. Not being able to reconcile my thoughts after the embarrassment. Hotly suffering back to my seat after the humiliation had ended.
I was finally challenging this haunting memory by registering for a course in Public Speaking (which I later learned was required for my newly declared minor anyway). After the initial “get-your-feet-wet” few minutes at the podium, I found that – much to my surprise – it was fairly smooth sailing. Almost every other student in the class dreaded the thought of public floundering just as much as I did and some had even less experience (and confidence) at the podium. I learned the ins and outs of the rhetoric that powers good orators and found that it helped me develop skills not only in speaking to an audience but also in my major coursework and in life. Good orators tell a story and curate words to invoke feeling just as a writer does with her novel. As I began to make these connections, I actually (…wait for it…) began to enjoy Public Speaking. It became a sort of exciting challenge for me not only to completely defy my run-and-hide instinct but also a challenge to create the best lesson-teaching story I could muster. Life is, after all, composed of stories waiting to be told. Whether it be the enduring song of the socially oppressed or the seemingly simple process of making toast in the morning, everything’s got a story.
I remember finishing all four required speeches (plus two shorter "improv" deliveries) and achieved an A in the class. I’m sure this was partly because our professor realized almost everyone in the class had their sights set on career interests more than a stone’s throw from professional oration, but the takeaway from my petty story is that I almost missed out on a great opportunity simply because of fear. Fear is our most powerful inhibitor and I think that when we face it, beautiful things happen. It seems almost silly to me that a class was able to give me so much in the way of confidence, but I am proud of how far I’ve come since the start of sophomore year. That year, I learned how to effectively practice presentations for other courses and even interview responses for jobs that I would have just “winged” before. I began to feel a little more comfortable asserting control over my voice and making sure I was heard. My writing even improved; I got a better sense of the ingredients of successful arguments and the ways in which they impacted an audience. FDR was able to unite and comfort an entire fearful nation with just his words and voice (speeches, Fireside Chats). If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.
I encourage you all to go out and do something you fear. See what it does for you. Over one year later, I am still thankful for that streak of bravery responsible for my taking a Public Speaking class. Moments out of one's comfort zone truly are the most impactful.
Even if you come out of a new and nerve-wracking experience feeling defeated as ever, you will at least have initiated a resistance to your fear. Eventually, after enough encounters, your fear won’t be as intense (there’s some stale knowledge for you from Psych 101, freshman year. You’re welcome).
