15 Face Planting My Way to Growth

Many people who know me today find this difficult to believe, but I spent my adolescence and early adulthood terrified of public speaking. Terrified. Absolutely terrified. I can’t stress this word enough, so instead I’ll tell a story. It’s a story of fear and growth, of failure and success.

I didn’t experience this fear in my K-8 school. It was a small, private school where I knew everyone. While I was certainly not popular, I did not find interacting with my peers difficult. After eighth grade, however, I attended (with many protestations) a private, college preparatory school. It was not the same school that all my brothers had attended, was highly competitive, and mostly attended by students from much greater financial means than those of my family. And in this highly competitive pressure cooker where I knew no one, I developed a debilitating fear of having to speak in public. In my sophomore year, we were required to take speech class for one semester, and it was — in my overly dramatic teenaged mind — the worst possible thing I could have to endure.

When I say that I was terrified, I mean it. I would be in the bathroom before class alternating between throwing up and trying to stifle my sobs. My speeches were, not surprisingly, terrible — so terrible that even in an environment where students passed up no opportunity to tease, my classmates just stared awkwardly at the floor as I rambled, babbled, and muttered. Only because the class also involved exams and homework that could help balance out my terrible speech grades, I approached my final speech with a low C in the class.

The final speech was to be five to seven minutes, a duration that feels like an eternity for someone afraid of public speaking. All I had to do was make it through these five minutes and I would never have to do it again. I was prepared with my note cards that were, let’s be honest, a script rather than notes. Just read the words, Tom… just read the words out loud and be done.

And that would have been a great plan except for one problem: I had a total of seven note cards, and in my barely controlled panic I didn’t notice that when I flipped from card two, cards three, four, and five stuck to the back and I flipped directly to card six. Quite literally, I stopped reading in the middle of one sentence and started reading again in the middle of another — but three minutes later in the speech. I finished reading card seven, and looked up to see mouths agape, a clock that had definitely not elapsed enough, and my teacher’s face showing equal parts pity and confusion. In that moment, I knew that I had botched the speech and I was flooded with all of the feelings. I imagined having to tell my parents I failed, having to retake the class, of even having to set foot in the school again. And on my way back to my desk, seized with all of those feelings, I experienced severe cramping in both legs at the same time and fell, literally, on my face in front of my class. True story. And, it’s okay if you are laughing right now. I laugh at this memory all the time.

There’s a Japanese proverb that says: fall down seven times, get up eight. And while I was certainly not thinking of this at the time, this fall (oh, such a mighty fall) and how I bounced back from it over time has completely shaped my life. A growth mindset helps us see failure as opportunity for growth, obstacles as opportunities to learn, and feedback as a tool for refinement. But a growth mindset also requires that we take personal responsibility for that growth.

As a part of that personal responsibility, I started making the decision to push myself outside of my comfort zone to find ways to face discomfort and fear rather than being limited by it. I began volunteering to speak in class, being the group “spokesperson” for group work, and developing relationships with people at my school. Did it always work out smoothly? No. Did I learn from each time it didn’t? Yes.

My senior year, I decided to do something that two years prior would have been incomprehensible: I tried out for the school musical. I was cast as one of the lead dancers and began rehearsing to both sing and dance in front of an auditorium full of people. Did I nail every move? No. Did I get better and more confident? Yes.

As an undergraduate, I decided to take an elective speech class to face my fears of public speaking — which still remained — and find some vindication from my high school experience. It was a remarkable class in which I leaned into my need for growth instead of running from it. Was my fear of public speaking gone by the end of that semester? No. Was it more manageable? Yes.

Growth. It’s a process — and a complicated one — not a single step from failure to success, from not knowing to knowing, from can’t to can. Slowly, with very great intention, I became more confident, less fearful, and more skilled at the very thing that gripped me with fear before.

The reason that so many people cannot believe this part of my history is that I have spent the last nearly 20 years cultivating a career that is anchored by the need to engage in public speaking. From teaching seminar courses for 25 undergraduate students, facilitating trainings for 50 peers, offering two-hour lectures for over 400, or speaking at recruiting events to over 1,000, I am constantly in a public speaking role. And here’s the strangest thing: I love it. It is no longer the thing that immobilizes me, but something that fills me with energy. I am better at public speaking than I was before. But am I done getting better? Absolutely not.

About the author

name: Thomas A. Murray

Tom Murray is the Course Director for UNIV 101 and Associate Professor of Practice with the W. A. Franke Honors College. When he is not focused on work, he spends time playing taiko with Odaiko Sonora and training for and running ultramarathons. Taiko performances and ultramarathons almost never go to plan and so require a significant amount of problem solving, a skill that Tom believes was finely honed in his own general education experience.