2003-02-06 - 11:24 p.m.
I'm doing something I never do. Work. At home in the evening. I'm usually such a five o'clock girl (or a four thirty girl). I leave it all behind when I walk out the door, and don't pick it up until I go back the next day. But once in a while something comes up that I have to obsess over, and this time it is my absolute least favorite thing in the whole world. Public speaking.
It really doesn't help much, but I read someplace that public speaking is one of the most feared things in the general population. People would rather have operations and car accidents and muggings than to get up in front of a group and speak. I guess it does make me feel a little less like a freek, but where are all these people? Everyone in my world seems able to stand up and yak away like they were in their living rooms. Maybe it is one of those qualities you have to have to be in the education business: the power to pontificate.
Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, I have to give a short presentation to a group of deans and directors about.... what else.... our department's goals. My faithful readers may remember that I have been twitching about the goals for about six months now. I keep thinking it is going to be over, the goals are decided, and we can go back to normal life, but NOOOOOO.... it is the work nightmare that never ceases. They are continually recast into different documents, requiring more meetings, more powerpoints, more debate, more explanations. It is a unique brand of hell. Sartre obviously never worked for a university, or No Exit would have been about producing endless lists of goals and never having time to achieve them...(Never mind that I resent spending hours and hours drumming up goals for us to meet when we are being denied raises for a third year, and charged more for our crappy insurance and parking so the paychecks keep getting smaller. They still have the nerve to stand up there and say "We want you to do more..." )
It reminds me of a college English professor who made our advanced composition class write three papers about the same poem. It was one I didn't much care for anyway: Peter Quince at the Clavier, by Wallace Stevens. I handed in the first one with a sigh of relief, feeling that I had dragged the bottom of the well to find enough to say about it. When he assigns another paper: "Your topic will be Peter Quince at the Clavier," the students are incredulous. Then we get the assignment for the final paper: Yep. Peter Quince at the Clavier. Notice I never forgot that. Just another time I wanted to scream NOOOOO.
Anyway, the boss dumped this little bombshell on me a couple of days ago. I thought I wasn't even invited to this, the big boys meeting, which is supposed to be for Directors and Assistant Directors, not to include us lesser mortals. Usually I happily volunteer to do all the background work. I'll do the the writing, the copying, calling, e-mailing, coordinating. But please, just not the talking.
"Do I have to (--gulp--) get up in front of the room and talk?"
"I know you hate public speaking." he says, "But you are so good at it."
I am amazed that he continues to hold this opinion. I am not actually good at all, but once he attended an informational session I was conducting (something like a class) where I happened to do a pretty good job, and so he now thinks he knows this about me. That I don't like it but I'm good. Maybe it is better that he holds a positive opinion rather than a negative one, but he picks some odd things to remember.
What he doesn't know is that I barely slept or ate for several days prior to that occasion. That I was emotionally wrecked and exhausted with the effort of speaking in public for an hour and a half. There is nothing harder for a shy person. I have had a few experiences that completely freeked me out, those times when I tried to talk in public and suddenly my body would not let me both talk and breathe. Every few words, I would be gasping for air, and then I could feel the heat start to creep up my neck, knowing my face was glowing bright red. And in a panic I forget whatever I was going to say, I forget, in fact, about three-quarters of my vocabulary and my tongue becomes too large and sticky to form the words I can remember. It is amazing what fear can do to a person. It is like some kind of potent drug that can change all your physical and mental responses.
So at eight o'clock in the morning I will be in a big meeting room, dressed up, feeling like turpentine has replaced my blood. Dread has been hanging over my head all day, coloring the way I see everything, making me jumpy. I kept finding myself perched on the very edge of my chair instead of actually seated in it, and I hadn't realized it because every muscle in my body was so tense. It is kind of like having a toothache. As soon as you have one, you look back at all the hours you didn't have it and think how wonderful they were. What wonderful work days I've had, with no public speaking in them...
I also get a little mad at myself, though, for being such a basket case. It does seem as though there ought to be some way to calm down and get it under control. I have been practicing some little relaxation techniques. Trying to remember to breathe, and trying to find some center of calm somewhere in my body. The only "at least" I can think of right now is: at least I don't have to play the guitar for them. I'd really suck at that.
�
