The drama club was a part of my entire primary school life. I was chosen to be part of this club as I was seen as one of the young black girls in the class with a lot of potential to do well in terms of speech & drama and public speaking. This drama club was formed in order to boost the confidence of a number of black girls in the grade 2 class who may not have been able to afford to pay for an extra mural activity such like the Speech & Drama Club.
With the love I developed for drama in primary school, I continued to take Drama in high school as a subject. Even though I did not enjoy drama as much as I did in Primary school, it still helped me a lot with being more confident when it came to performing in front of people as well as speaking well.
Coming into varsity I obviously did expect those random speeches or presentations to come my way seeing that I am studying media as a major but never did I once think that my confidence would drop.
Last semester I had to perform an extract from a play that we are studying in English with a few of my group members and my performance was not one that of a student that had studied drama for so long. But I did not really see this as a problem because we had not practiced or anything of that sort.
Many a times when I find myself having to speak to a small group of people, I struggle to speak with confidence. I find myself stammering, shaking and not pronouncing simple words properly. Could this be because I don’t read out loud enough or because I barely read for my own pleasure? I am very concerned about my public speaking abilities as they have really gone to the dogs and this upsets me very much.
What does one do to improve this? This is not the “me” that I am used to.
Meh.
Twiggy Moli
