 Ahem. Ah yes, public speaking. It is something that we will all go through at some point, whether that's at school, within a work environment, or even within a celebration environment. For those of us who aren't super extroverted, it can unfortunately be quite a traumatic time filled with stress and panic. Just seeing all those eyes quietly staring back at you, expecting something. My first experience was news, a daily activity in early primary school where each kid would talk directly to the class for roughly two minutes. My puppy ate spaghetti. At Macca's I saw Nate, hi Nate, hi. And that is why I think I have lice. Little did I know that this was actually a tactical and cutesy way of introducing us all to… PUBLIC! OH MY GOD! Then later in primary school came the yearly public speaking competitions. In hindsight, the entire event is kinda messed up. Every student had no choice but to make a long speech, present it to the class, and then get brutally criticised and ranked by the TEACHER! Sounds like so much fun, am I right guys? You forgot a line? Take away marks. You mispronounced a word. Take away more. You were so nervous and had an internal panic attack and struggled to make a single noise, let alone words to form sentences and everyone staring at you is thinking, wow, this girl is weird. Oh wow, can she hurry up? You're standing there frozen and you don't know what to do. Detention! Oh, and don't even think about trying to get out of it. Hey miss, I accidentally left my speech at home so I can't present it. Stay in for all of your lunch break and write it again. Nobody messes with my sacred lunch break. Three rounds. Each round you got through, the more people you would have to speak in front of. Like a tournament? What is this? It was like the Hunger Games, but public speaking. Part of me would be nervous, but to be honest, I think I was more excited to tell my peers' stories. I guess that does make sense. However, most years I didn't even get close to passing the first round. Goodbye speech! Next years I said, surprisingly, I did make it through a few times. In grade one it was for talking about my dog Cassie, you know the one, rest in peace Cassie. Grade fives was about haircuts, yeah, I got through round one for talking about hair. Anyway, and in grade six it was about going to a Taylor Swift concert. The jump from round one to round two was quite scary. You went from speaking in front of about 25 kids to speaking in front of about 100. Yes, it did make me a little nervous, as you would expect. And so I think that is the reason why I didn't make it any further in these competitions. Haha hair, am I right? I definitely wasn't mad though because round three consisted of writing a speech on the spot and then performing them to roughly 400 kids right away. It was always funny watching this though because it made it so obvious who had their initial speech written by their parents get exposed. Thank you for listening to my public speaking tea. You know what I find even worse than all that? Okay, maybe not worse than the competition structure as a whole, but something that makes me far more uncomfortable reading aloud from a textbook in high school. Especially when you don't know how to pronounce a word and have to be like, sorry I don't know how to say that word. It says illiterate. Or when the teacher says we are going around to the classroom each reading paragraph by paragraph so then you count ahead to see which one you will read and you're stuck with the biggest one! Nothing like rehearsing it a million times in your head while people before you do their parts. And realising they're reading what you've been reading and you've been rehearsing the wrong section? No, I didn't run for school captain or anything like that. It just wasn't for me. But I did do a speech for my final high school assembly with a few of my friends. It was just a casual speech in front of the entire school highlighting fun moments we all had throughout our final year and just high school in general. Funny thing was, no one wanted to do it! So I got nominated and just went along with it. This crowd was a lot more than 400 kids which was a little daunting so little me would have been proud of that character development. From what I can remember it couldn't have gone better and turns out I wasn't so nervous. It was actually kind of fun. Now to finish this off I've got some quick public speaking hacks. LETS GO! 1. Don't look at anyone in the eyes personally. It always made me more nervous. Some people imagine their audience are wearing underwear but that's a little ah. Creepy so just find something that works for you. Looking at the back wall is always a good option. 2. When I'm nervous or I've got a lot to read sometimes I'll forget to breathe. Highlighters are your best friend for this. Try highlighting each sentence a different colour. It helps keep you on track with where you're reading especially if you look up at your audience like the teachers want you to. You can find your spot on your cards quickly again. I still do this to this day. 3. Just like with anything, confidence grows over time. There's nothing wrong with stum- stumbl- on words. Everyone does it. It's just a part of the process. Even to this day when recording scripts I still always have countless stumbles. I'm not going to be cliche and say that practice makes perfect but it gets you moving in that direction. Yeah for me public speaking is like it's pretty, it's okay. I don't look at anybody in the eyes ever. I just look like right above their heads and I'm talking to a wall but I mean you know it's efficient so who cares. If you're public speaking in school you should probably write out everything so you like practice it a couple of times so you know like what you're saying and what you're doing. Don't just like go for it. And definitely don't make jokes because I've been there, done that, no one left and my pride was destroyed. I made a joke about my hand because it was broken and I had a cast on and basically I said to everybody to address the elephant in the room yes I did get a haircut and I lifted up my hand which I thought was stupid but kind of funny and I think maybe one person giggled and it was just a lot of silence and it was very awkward and I never made a joke ever again in my life. This whole topic is as divisive as pineapple on pizza. Some people like it and some people hate it. It's rare but some people do actually fall in between where their thoughts on it are kind of meh. Like it's not a disgusting topping but they're not dying to have it but if their family want it then they'll still happily take a slice. Um, what's your most embarrassing public speaking moment? I'm starting a miniseries on my second channel called Jolly Jess and I'll be reading your comments and sharing your stories. It'll be a great way to make the conversation a little less one sided. I'd love to see you over there. Catch you later Wobbly Boys.