Stage fear!!

In the second year of my college life, ”the paper presentation fever” caught up. Almost everyone I knew would bunk college in the pretext of going to other colleges for paper presentations(whether they really participated..that is another matter). However since everyone was so hyper about these presentations including the staffs and HOD, I also decided to give it a shot along with my friend. We had submitted a paper on 3G Wireless Communications(just ctrl+c and ctrl+v from the net) to a college in Trichy. We submitted the paper there because I knew a person in the selection committee who would surely get us through!!! Actually our paper was also good enough and got great stuff in it..just that it was a pity that we didn’t get to learn it till now. I don’t make sense right? How could we present the paper without actually learning the contents. There is a much easier way…to mug up the contents(whether it really gets into the mind is another issue). However we didn’t have much option. That is because we are always the last-minute learners, be it university exams or such paper presentations we always waste time till the last minute and put up “Herculean” efforts during the last one or two days. This time it was just one night during the bus journey!!!Well.. I did my best to stay awake and mug up but I couldn’t fight with sleep for long. I lost the battle and fell into a peaceful sleep though it was an uncomfortable bus journey. However my friend did a better job both in learning her part and presenting it too!!! Actually I can do a better job if I am asked to give a dance performance on stage. However presenting in front of a huge crowd makes me shudder even at the mere thought. Hence my performance, as predicatable, was terrible. I forgot most of my part and had to finally settle with reading from the slides(thank god that unlike exams, they legally allow the use of “mega-sized bits” in the form of powerpoint slides). Though I made a fool of myself on stage I never cared about it for long. The food was very good and had a nice time relishing it. The person I knew there dragged us into giving names for an event called Tech ‘n’ Talk!!! Again a presentation in front of a big crowd.Oh my god!!!!That too I don’t get to prepare for more than two minutes, as I get to choose the topic only when the person before me starts to blah..blah!! I need to talk about a word they give me technically for a minute and non-technically for a minute.My friend got the word “net”. She did an excellent job speaking about networks for the first minute and fishing nets for the next minute and ended beautifully with the song “oh Maria oh Maria” from “Kaadhalar dhinam”. She sang that song to fill up the space till that one minute was over because it contained words like “kadaluku fishing net,kaadhaluku internet” which brought a huge round of applause from the crowd. Since I was watching her perform, I forgot to prepare and I was the next one to go.My word was “Sim”. Thank god!! The first one minute was going to be easy as I talked abt the sim in mobile phones about which I got some exposure to, the previous night. Mugging does have its advantages sometimes!! “Tring” !!Oh my god!! The second minute started and I need to talk non technically on “Sim”.uh.oh….oh yaa!!! The beautiful actress simran!!I went on about what was her first film(made a mistake in that too..) and how well she acts and dances in films. Then I also wanted to follow the technique of my friend and was about to sing a song when I heard the bell ring for the second time and I knew the ordeal was over. But I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to sing a song too!!! But that won me the second place in the end. My friend was supposed to have gotten the prize because she had done so well but she was disqualified as she sang and the event allowed people to only talk. Well.. that’s what happens most of the time.. the well-deserved gets to lose sometimes. However at the end the well-deserved always get the best making their wait worthwhile. Anyway what I narrated above was one of my most memorable events. Though I did make a fool of myself while presenting, it was a great experience which made me take it up as a challenge to get rid of my stage fear and I was successful in eliminating it.