Like all freshmen students at San Diego State, I was required to enroll in at least one oral communication class. This is a forced enrolled course, meaning I had to take it this semester -- I couldn’t have taken it in the fall, and I couldn’t take it next year.
So I find myself in one of the biggest lectures halls on campus every Wednesday with approximately 500 other students who were also forced enrolled into this course. Total, my instructor has about 2,300 students he lectures to on Mondays and Wednesdays. And I can guarantee that the majority of those 2,300 students, including myself, would have never voluntarily signed up for this class.
According to my professor, public speaking is the number one fear in America. As a country, we fear to talk in front of people more than we fear death or spiders or heights, or any other thing that could actually, in theory, hurt us. Yet the fact remains. Almost nobody, besides those select few who become our teachers, professors, TED Talk motivational speakers, or Oprah's, likes public speaking.
My personal biggest fear is heights. You put me anywhere near the edge of anything above six feet and I start getting jumpy. However, it's relatively easy to avoid heights. I refuse to go to the top of certain buildings, like the Stratosphere Tower in Vegas, where the sole purpose is to be really high in the air. I don’t look out windows or over railings when I’m in a tall building.
I voluntarily visited the Grand Canyon, but I had to walk back towards the edge, with the help of my friends, so we could get a picture without me having to actually see the edge. The moment the picture was taken, I sprinted as far away as I could go without losing sight of my friends. I looked away in horror as they sat with their legs dangling over the edge.
It caused me physical pain to see them doing these things. At some point, I started crying from the sheer overstimulation. It's moments like these when I realize that my fears are a little different than the average persons -- because mine is accompanied by my anxiety.
One of those friends I went with is also afraid of heights. Yet she was right there on the edge with everyone else. I briefly thought she was just exaggerating. In reality, I just have that next level to my fear. This anxiety makes it seemingly impossible to face my fears -- because when I do, panic attacks and other unpleasantries ensue.
My mind creates this sense of impending doom that is inescapable. Telling me to calm down, to not think about it or to think of something else is like telling me to stop my lungs, to stop breathing, or to stop my blood from flowing through my veins. It's not possible.
So I find myself in COMM 103 this semester, giving four graded speeches to a smaller section of about 20 students. On my subconscious list of fears, giving presentations closely follows heights. Notice, that I didn’t say public speaking. My conundrum is this: I can get in front of a group of people and talk. I can go in front of the classroom, and speak to my peers. I can teach a class of twenty third-graders. Yet the moment I have to give a speech, my anxiety soars through the roof.
I am not a socially anxious person. I’m not introverted. I could care less about the number of people I’m talking to, from five to 20 to a 100. But the interaction has to be impromptu. If I am given the task ahead of time, expected to have a general idea of what I’m talking about, and then deliver that information at a later date, all of my ease goes out the window.
Thus, signing up for an oral communication course this semester was basically the equivalent of telling me to stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and look down. No matter how prepared I’ve been for these past speeches, the moment my teacher says start, I’m standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and all I want to do is run away and cry. My teacher, afterward, reminds me to breathe. My anxiety is palpable.
Giving speeches and enjoying the view of the Grand Canyon aren’t the only things that my anxiety ruins for me. They are just the two aspects that I have yet to learn how to handle with my anxiety -- probably because I actively avoid them as much as possible.
I’m not the only person to hate giving speeches, or even get anxious about them. But something a lot of people, especially professors, cannot understand is the distress and physical pain giving a speech brings me. My poor roommates have a pretty good idea though.
