Inside the YeahKate: worst presenter, ever!

I am an embarassment to my job and self today.

On paper I have a really good job. In my personal life I am really fun and I don't think many would call me shy. I like to talk. i have an opinion and sometimes I can be really funny. I rarely get embarassed. I ace like every job interview I have ever been on. I feel like I give off the impression of confidence. So you can imagine my shock of late to learn that I am in fact like the worst presenter in the world. The worst presenter in the world. There are bad presenters because they are boring or don't say anything. I WISH I was just boring or uninteresting. I am bad because I can't actually present my point of view if there are more than three people present who I don't intimately know or if I am on a conference call. For some reason now I get the shakey, flat, mouse voice, I start sweating like a pig, my hands shake and I can't remember basic English. Is this normal? Is there treatment for this?


Today the most embarassing thing happened to me. No. It didn't happen to me- I humiliated myself. I was supposed to say like three minutes worth of content on a conference call. I started out fine and then two sentences into it I lost my place, started to hyperventilate and basically panicked. It felt like someone threw a switch and I had no control over my body or mind. I tried taking a sip of water to find out that my cup was empty. I was looking at my presentation page to find something, anything to say. I just stopped talking and there was total silence on the line. I forgot what I was supposed to be saying, the point of what I was talking about. I actually said- I don't have the presentation open to stall for time when my phone went dead. There is a god, I tell you. I can't believe my phone went dead. I asked one close colleague if she could estimate about the damage that I did to my reputation. she said that the phone cut off when I was still pretty much at the beginning. I am too paranoid to believe her, but there is no one else I can ask- so did you hear me hyperventilating or did the phone cut off before I had my nervous breakdown in front of all the senior execs?


Do any of my beloved YeahKaters have any suggestions for me? If I am being totally honest with myself, I have never been good at presenting. I get around it by becoming friends with everyone and pretending like I am just chatting. But on a conference call in front of people I have never met, I can't quite play that trick on my mind. I am the most vulnerable, nervous and exposed when I am hundreds of miles away on a telephone.


Two weeks ago I took a class in German on presenting skills. That is pretty brave, no? I had to stand in front of them and talk in German. But for some reason I felt comfortable and it was no problem. Also, there were only three of us in the class. I told them about my shaking, mouse voice problem that i have developed. As an excercise I had to stand in front of them and yell ER HAT DEISES GELD NICHT GENOMMEN and then emphasize each word in turn. When I said ER hat dieses Geld nicht genommen, I had to like stamp my foot and point at some imaginary asshole who wouldn't take my money and so on. It was supposed to get me to develop my voice. I think I should write the teacher and tell him the excercise didn't work. The letter would go- Dear Asshole, YOUR class doesn't work. I still SUCK at presenting. I have to write this since actually saying it would come out as, "yooouuurr cacaclass, um ahh. hmmm? was.... Uh my computer just froze."