So can I tell you that today I had a 25 minute speech to give on the history of the illustrations in my "The Text" class today? Yes, it's a class called "The Text" and yes, we analyze things like how the text is laid out on a page, and how the illustration is related to the text. Even worse, we've managed to analyze the text - and everything surrounding it - in minute detail as of the Middle Ages. Oh yeah.
May I also remind you that my schooling is done entirely in French, mainly with French students? They all speak this language maternally, and I, the babbling idiot that I am, had to give a nervous 25-minute speech in my second language.
The highlight of the speech was the moment at which I argued with myself - out loud - over the past participle of the verbe permettre, which, for real now, I totally know. But put me in front of a bunch of Frenchies listening intently, taking NOTES for God's sake, and I just can't remember a damn thing. I was having trouble just remembering basic conjunctions and vocabulary, people! I also may have mentioned the word sodomy and the equivalent of "crazy-ass rich old Londoners" to my class at some point, although hopefully nobody took notes on that part.
The main thing I realized, though, is that, Christ Almighty, I can really be over the top sometimes. This must run in my family, although I really don't see it in my mother and only moderately in my father. Instead, all three of us kids have this interesting tendency to get (perhaps overly) theatrical at times. This can maybe be part of our charm - as is the case in my brother and sister's cases - and it also means that all of us kids are pretty good at imitating foreign accents and famous actors. But it can also mean that our theatrics slip out at inopportune moments, and that perhaps we misgauge the required theatric level of a given statement. For example, today, when I realized, just a split second after I had begun my little reenactement (aka the point of no return) that, hm... maybe I shouldn't be pretending to be Londoners reacting to Art Nouveau via interpretive gestures and exclamatory phrases. In fact, those kinds of theatrics make my classmates nervous. And when they start shifting uneasily in their seats, I start shifting uneasily in mine.
In the end, my professor came by afterwards to tell me that it was a job well done. I honestly don't know if she meant it, or if she just felt sorry for the foreign girl who doesn't know how to do a presentation according to French standards. Just why exactly was I searching for comedic effect, I'm not sure. But hey, at least I gave them all a presentation to remember. I'm just glad we're not meeting again for another three weeks so that they can let that whole 'wacko' stigma subside for a little while.
But most importantly, I will never have to do a presentation in front of a French-speaking audience for at least another year. I went out an drank some sangria in celebration of the making my way over such a fabulous hurdle. If only they knew that I was so nervous about the presentation that I almost lost my lunch minutes after consuming it, they would have understood why I kept finding myself saying the darndest things.
Really, I'd like to plop them in front of a bunch of Anglophones for half an hour and see how well they fare. Sadly, I think they'd do fine. I, however, just made a big show of it. What the hell is my problem? I don't know why I always try to overcompensate. Embarassment is so much better if dealt with in a mellow way. I've never managed to do that. I just go right over the top.
Agh... Walk it off (� la Chris Rock).
I'm sure that they were all thinking how brave you were. Nearly everybody gets at least a little freaked out about presentations...Jason's old boss in Paris got so nervous that he wouldn't do them at all in English. Jason didn't mind doing it since he could understand the hesitation. However, he soon came to find out that the boss didn't want to do them in French either. Filling in on those was pretty frightening for Jason! :)
That's awesome!
I studied abroad in Vienna, and had to do several presentations and even act in a play "auf Deutsch."
It was miserable for me, since I generally feel uneasy about public speaking (but can pull it off in English), and since my grasp of the German language, while strong for the typical American, was very, very poor in the wider sense of things.
I remember sitting in classes about Viennese Theater, for example, after having read "Die Dreigroschen Oper," and not understanding a thing anyone was saying. Sure, the words were familiar, but having drunk about 10 beers the night before, being totally preoccupied with a lady friend of mine, and just generally floating out there without a clue as to what I was doing all this for, made wrestling any sort of meaning down to my level very near impossible.
In the end, grading was a lot lighter on the touch than I had anticipated, and I did fine. but those were some of the last, most terrifying moments of my life to day.
Ciao