I chose 1 because I am horrible at public speaking with some exceptions. There are a couple of topics where I actually know what I am talking about and find myself quite comfortable in front of any audience. I was once given an award unexpectedly at a company award ceremony. The thought of a speech had not crossed my mind. I didn’t even realize I was going to an award ceremony. Anyway, I was asked to speak on how to run a truck shop. The entire time I was talking I was actually amazed at myself and kept waiting for the bottom to drop out of my talk. It just kept flowing and afterward they were standing in line to talk with me and shake my hand. One of the highlights in my dull life.
I think it’s just how we skew. Many of us have or held jobs in which it was required. Also, a lot of us are university educated and have dealt with public speaking. We also have a decent number of artists, musicians, writers, etc that are also accustomed to it.
I wouldn’t try to bullshit a bunch of experts, but many people are terrified of asking a question of an expert where others can hear. No problem with that here.
Wouldn’t present something I don’t know, hate working from slides prepared by someone else. I have been known to ask the CEO of a company with 6-figures employees in every continent including Anctartica to “wait until the next slide whenever you find one incomplete”. At the end of the presentation he laughed and said that yep, every time he’d found the information on a slide to be incomplete, the missing information happened to be the next slide; meanwhile my boss had almost died from the shock of someone telling Mr Important a polite version of “if you can kindly shut the fuck up, maybe I’ll finish my explanation this year”.
I have a question: in the US, is it normal to not have had to do any public speaking until college? Or perhaps, none other than class presentations. I ask because I see several people mentioning college classes specifically.
Once I’m up there, I am confident, I can be funny and off-the-cuff, and I will stay up there as long as it takes. All anxiety leaves me.
But if it’s voluntary, I won’t be first to volunteer.
I totally hate public speaking. I’d rather go to the dentist and I hate going to the dentist.
Looking at the poll numbers 11 people (well, 10 others) voted 1, but none of them wrote up a comment. I wonder if they felt uncomfortable doing so?