Hurdling over the table, I began to sweat. I was anxious that I would be ridiculed if I was unable to do one simple thing, one which would be important for my ensemble acting speech event. My feet left the ground, and I began to rise up in the air. Alas, it was all over in a second. When it was over, the other people in my group gave me a disapproving shake of their head. I had failed. My feet screeched across the tile floor as I readied for another jump. Once again, I pushed off the ground, but this time I felt different. This time I slid across the table, and lost control of my body. I flew off the other end with extreme speed and smashed into the floor. Everyone was silent at first, but within a few seconds my speech coach erupted in laughter. The other speech performers soon followed suit. Even I, in my moment of pain began to laugh. All I could think to myself was, “At least they are laughing. I guess it’s not that embarrassing.” It had turned out that my fear of speaking and acting, like my pain, was rapidly disappearing. Although I had a great fear of speaking for much of my life, speech has completely flipped that idea, by forcing me to overcome shyness, and obliterating any fear of public speaking left in me.

The day preceding my first speech practice was a rough one. In fact it wasn’t even a practice; it was an audition. Throughout the day I had a sickening pain in my stomach, similar to the feeling of surviving on school lunches for days on end. As the end of the day neared, the nauseating feeling worsened, and I was worried for what the afternoon would encompass. Suddenly the bell rang, and my classmates flooded from the room.

The bell was a penultimate statement, the chisel which wrote my name on my gravestone. It was now completely set in stone that I would have to get up in front of a whole group of people, people who knew how to act no less and embarrass myself. I walked to my locker with a solemn look on my face. People were already entering the auditorium for the auditions. I hurried to my locker, packed my book bag, and got on my way. When I entered the auditorium there was already people sitting there, ready for their chance to participate. I sat down. I sat away from everyone, not only because of my timidity, but because I knew no-one who was already there.

As I sat, all that went through my head were negative thoughts, things like, “You’re going to get up there, mess up, and get laughed at” or “Nobody will even recognize you, and you won’t even get into the one act play.” My negative thought process was interrupted when a speech coach walked in and slammed a pile of black and white scripts onto the auditorium stage. I walked up to grab one. They read, “Bang, Bang, You’re dead.” The speech coach began to call out names for reading. As I watched people perform, my mood evened. Not because I felt more confident, but because I had forgotten what I was worrying about. When someone messed up, nobody kicked them off the stage. Nobody made any comments. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I hear, “Ethan.”

I got up, and walked towards the stage. I breathed in and out, trying to calm my nerves. Inhale, Exhale. The thoughts of failure had made an appearance again. Inhale, Exhale. I came to a halt in the middle of the stage. Inhale, Exhale. I was told to begin speaking. As I spoke I had to take long pauses to breathe. Every time that I stopped speaking to take a breath, I felt silent judgement. I knew for sure I would get smashed into a minor role, if I was to even get in the one-act play at all. As I concluded my monologue, there was applause. Not “you did a good job” applause though; it was more like, “We have to applaud you to be polite, so here you go.” That really made me nervous. As I sat and watched other people go up and audition, my nerves faded, but the sickening feeling in my stomach stayed. After about 6-7 people auditioned, the entire thing was over. I picked up my book bag and began to leave. On my way out one of the other speech coaches gave me a, “Good Job.” It seemed authentic to me. It seemed funny at the time how two words could change my mood so much. After hearing that, I felt happier, and the feeling in my stomach left me. It was roughly a week before the roles were given out. I had been deemed, “Public Defender.” At first I thought of it as an extremely small part, but after looking through the script, I came to terms with the fact that although it wasn’t a main role, it wasn’t a minor role either, and I should be proud.

Within the week, I had my first real speech practice. This time it was for my ensemble acting piece, and not the one-act. This meant I would be with a smaller group. Before going into the practice I was extremely anxious. I had been put with two juniors, both of whom had much more speech experience than me. At first the practice was going slowly, it was mainly just going over lines and thinking about what we were going to do. Because of my nerves I was never really able to talk and my opinion was never expressed to the group, I just followed along. After about an hour of that, we pulled out a table. We were told to see if we could do any cool table tricks that we could use for our ensemble acting piece. One by one everyone was able to jump over the table, but then when we had to pick up the pace things began to get difficult. The first time I jumped over the table it was a bust. My only results were looks of disappointment, and the fact that I would have to jump again. The second time was much different though. As I got off the ground, I began to realize I had too much speed. I hit the table and began to slide. I reminded myself of a train, one which was unable to slow down in time for a turn. I hurtled off the table and flew into the floor. At first there was silence, but then within a few seconds I heard laughter. I turned around to see everyone laughing at me. While that may sound bad, it was actually a very good thing. It made me more comfortable. Very quickly I gained the reputation for being the person who was unable to do anything requiring coordination. That new reputation made it easier for me to talk to people as I knew I could laugh at myself if I said or did something stupid. All it had taken for me to overcome my fear of speaking to people was one speech practice.

Very quickly word of my reputation had spread from speech to many of my classes. Slowly I was becoming less timid and more outspoken. I was no longer afraid to express my opinion in history class or talk to people who I had never spoken to before. This newfound skill came quite handy when the actual speech season rolled around. A good representation of a speech competition is a soup pot. Speech takes hundreds of people with different attitudes, backgrounds, and events, and mixes them all together into one large stew. If I had still been bashful during the first competition, I would have had zero fun. My idea was that if there is a building full of people whose opinions will not matter to me, I needed to have some fun. Other people have this same idea as well, and over the past few years, all sorts of things have been done. One of my favorites is introducing yourself to other people in a fun way. One way I have tried is, “Hello. My name is Ethan, and my favorite tree is an acacia tree. What’s your favorite tree?” This makes the person think one of two things. The first, “Alright. I guess I will play along and make a new friend today.” Or the other thought, “Oh my, what a strange person. It is best to ignore people like that.” Because of my experiences with laughing at myself, I didn’t care if the people I introduced myself to thought I was weird. I was just making an impression on random people. Doing this was also a way to relieve competition day stress, as it switched from a mindset of apprehension to a fun mindset. Because of the fun things I did with random people at speech competitions, my speaking anxiety was reduced even further from where it had been in the past.

My first performance was around lunchtime. All I remember was standing in the hallway outside of our performance center door and looking at the clock. It seemed so strange to me at the time that we couldn’t watch anyone ahead of us. I didn’t understand why they would make their performers stand in the hallways and not allow them to practice. Slowly the time ticked by. We waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually we just began to run through our lines to both ease stress, and hopefully refresh our memories. For me at least it only successfully fulfilled one of its obligations. After we had gone through the lines, I was more nervous than I had ever been before. The nerves brought back my fear of speaking. I began to mentally seize up. Negative thoughts continually ran through my head just like they had during my first audition. I dreaded the moment that I would have to get up in front of an audience, and a judge. Suddenly I heard a click, and the door opened. The applause sound from inside the room seeped out as the door opened. Similar to my feeling at auditions, I knew this was it. “No going back now,” I thought to myself. All three of us in the ensemble group gave each other a nod, and then someone said, “Let’s do this.” While that made me feel a bit better, as soon as I entered the performance center that all changed. Any elation left inside of me deflated like a balloon as soon as I saw the judge sitting there. My group and I readied the table and chairs for our performance and sat still as statues, awaiting the judge’s approval to begin.
The judge gave a flick of his pen on the paper he was writing comments on and slid it to the side. I can still hear the room chair begin to introduce us. “Please turn off all cell phones and pagers...” My breath had left me. “This is school code…” the room chair continued. I made panicked looks to my fellow competitors to make sure I fit in with them. “Performing the secrets of success.” I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. We were beginning. With my first movement, I gained back all the energy I had cooped up while I was nervous. I also lost any sense of fear left inside of me. At some points I remember worrying I was too loud because my energy level was too high. As our ensemble acting piece came to a close, I was relieved, but also saddened. I was happy to have the pressure lifted off of me, but public speaking, something which was once my very worst fear, has somehow given me a rush. I had made friends with an old enemy which had consumed me for so long. It was astonishing.

Leaving speech practice the night of my first practice was a strange sensation. Never before in my life had I gone back and reflected over how I had developed during the day. I saw a blue car pull up, and I instantly realized it as my ride. The auditorium door opened with a squeak, and as I was almost out of the door, I heard a voice behind me. “Great Job tonight Ethan” one of the other people in my acting piece had yelled to me. “Hope you aren’t in pain from that fall!” We both laughed, and as I left, my day became even more strange. I got in the car, and my mom was sitting there. When she asked how school was, my only response was, “Good.” On the outside my comment had made me sound calm and collected, but on the inside my thoughts were swirling.  I was finally free from the chains of timidity, which had ensnared me for so long. I could finally open up to people and express my opinions. My fear of public speaking was gone, and I had speech to blame for it.