The best thing a professor ever did

[White Sox]

A few years ago we were approaching the end of the semester in one of my classes and we had to do a 20 minute group presentation.

The professor said that he understands a lot of people are nervous about it but that we will all be ok.

Then he mentioned a story about a guy who stutters who came into his office a few years ago and asked him if he could write a paper instead of doing the presentation because he stutters. The professor replied and said "i know". And the kid said "you do?" and the professor said "yeah. you've been in the class the whole semester. however, everyone has to do the presentation" and the kid said "but what if i stutter?". and the professor repiled "then you stutter and continue giving the presentation".

after telling the story, he told the class that as long as we accept ourselves as a speaker the audience will accept us as well. If we are up there and look paniced and are thinking about if we mess up or stutter that we are failures than the audience will be focused on this instead of the material we are presenting.

After he told this story and made it "acceptable" to the class for someone to stutter, i felt a lot more calm and relaxed. I pulled off the presentation without stuttering once for the 5-6 minutes I had to talk.

Maybe the concept of accepting yourself and allowing yourself to stutter will ease a lot of the pressure and negative thinking involved with speaking. In the case with my class presentation, it reduced my stuttering to nothing for 6 minutes.

What are your thoughts on this?

[Standingtall]

I can understand you story and this is what I pick up on. From an sales tape, and the message on it is. People can pick up feelings from other people. For example, a man who is scared of dogs, walk into a fenced yard and sees an dog, he is going to feel fear and the dog will sense it and show the man his teeth and hear his growl.

Now, a little girl is going to that same house, sees the cute dog and the dog is going to licking her hand all the way to the door. Selling the girl guide cookies is a different story.

There could be a debate here, on the girl hasn't got bitten and doesn't have a reason to fear the dog. Not to go too far from the original message, now, if we accept our stutter and there is no reason to fear it, then people will treat you normal and listen to the message instead of the messanger.

Well, those are some of my thoughts.