Yesterday I presented my directed research project at the Minnesota Undergraduate Psychology Conference (MUPC), oh-so-conveniently held just a few blocks away on the Macalester campus. Ideally I would have had my ten-minute presentation ready days ago, but preparing for the TWENTY-minute worth-half-my-grade geography presentation I did on Friday kind of took priorty this past week.
So, Saturday morning found me rolling out of bed at 8:30 in order to whip my presentation into shape by 1 pm. It is just WRONG to wake up early on a Saturday morning without rewarding oneself with cartoons, you know? I miss my Pokemon fix. Instead, I hunched over the dining room table for 3 hours, meticulously writing out my notecards. Blech.
The conference itself actually went quite well. My audience was fairly substantial, and the presentation went off without a hitch, especially compared to the poor guy with a clinically diagnosed public speaking phobia who went before me:
I was chatting with him a bit before our session got started, and he told me about how nervous he was and how badly he thought his presentation would go. I thought it was just typical public speaking jitters, and gave him the standard reassurances. "Oh, I'm sure you'll be fine... ten minutes will be up before you know it!" I realized that his jitters were far from typical when he started off his speech by mentioning his phobia. Sadly, it all went downhill from there: He read his paper verbatim, made no eye contact whatsoever, and would occasionally pop out with a misguided attempt at light humor. He looked absolutely miserable. He'd barely reached the actual results section before his ten minutes were up and the room monitor tried to cut him off. Mercifully, she let him go on for another few minutes, but he was so shaken by being interrupted that he could barely stammer out the conclusion. Midway into the applause for him, he dashed out of the room in sheer embarrassment.
The thing that got me the most, though, was this: When we were talking before the session, he told me that he was really interested in my presentation, and would stick around to see it. I was pretty sure that plan had been cancelled when he fled the room, but, just as I was about to start, he slunk back in through the rear door and picked a seat in the back row. I was truly touched- I don't know if I would ever have the kind of will it takes to come back into a situation that had sent me running a few minutes before. I appreciated his quiet support more than that of any other person in the room.