"Vivian's Speech"

Today I freaked out about next Saturday's speech contest. I fear that when I go up to the stage (I'm last on the programme!) I'll have an anxiety attack and start stuttering through my speech.

To make myself feel a little better, I keep going back to last month when I spoke in front of perhaps 100 16-17 year olds at university about the IB diploma. It was at one of the University Place lecture theatres, which is absolutely massive (even bigger when they merge the two theatres into one), and I've been to SOAS's Brunei Gallery and I know UP is much bigger so at least I've had the experience of speaking in front of a large audience in a large theatre, and I know I did pretty well the other time (considering I hadn't prepared a speech beforehand)... BUT, that was public speaking in English and it was about personal experience so I didn't need to prepare anything and it wasn't a competition. This time is in Japanese and I have to memorise 10 minutes of speech and pretend to be all serious and smart and talk about politics.

I'm really grateful to the Japanese tutors at the University, who have given my some great feedback and suggestions on how to improve my speech. I know I still have a lot to work on, and I really want to win - not necessarily in the competition - but in competing against myself, hoping that I could overcome all the fear and anxiety of giving a speech in a foreign language. I (sort of) conquered it in English, and now it's in Japanese.