I worked in sales for a few years when I was younger before I started my actual career, I went from an introvert afraid of public speaking to completely comfortable breaking the ice with basically anyone in those years (mostly because I liked having four walls and a roof) and that led to me doing technical training/talks to strangers years later.

I still don't really like it but I also realised that dragons don't appear from portals and eat you immediately if you do it.

My missus is much like I was but she never got through it, she finds it fascinating that I can.

I studied my masters in Denmark 5 years ago, before AI. This was absolutely the case - first oral exams in my batchelors many of my fellow students were incredibly nervous. By the end the exam atmosphere was very chill. I definitely improved with public speaking, and so did the other students - including some who had been almost incapacitatingly anxious (throwing up, requiring a lot of convincing from us to even attend exams) and ended roughly the same as the rest of us

Practice helps!

What also helped me is being so knowledgeable about the topic that I didn't need to prepare the presentation much (except for the slides and the general plan). When you know what you have to talk about, it becomes a lot more natural and relaxed for me.

I would be a lot more stressed if I had to learn a presentation by heart and it would probably be a robotic delivery.

So I did quite a few "surprise" presentations, with very light prepared material and a topic I cared about. Got me the practice I needed and I learned not to get "stuck" as if I forgot the next sentence. The presentation always flows!

Now, I have a talk at a major conference, and I'm afraid this won't work there, so I'll prepare my talk better this time, maybe even have speaker notes!

That's part of what fixed it for me. What really fixed it was three things:

1. Actually being very knowledgeable about the subject in question, to the extent that I can offer facts or well-reasoned opinion on the topic on essentially any reasonable question. In other words, not being a junior high school student asked to do a 15 minute speech on a topic drawn from a hat.

2. Not having the idea that the audience expects a correct and immediate answer to every possible question.

3. Not doing every single speech literally in front of 15% of my entire peer group, including all my friends, all the people I admired, and all the people who treated me poorly.

I still hate doing Zoom calls without slides or a screen to share because I can't stand having 20 people staring intently at me. It's just distracting. But otherwise I have no problem at all talking for hours on a topic I know well.

> What fixed me: more public speaking

Yup, that's the cure. Worked for me, too.

Thanks for sharing this, a good example that people can grow and adapt. Some need a push and support but it's possible.

The best class I ever took in any school setting was Public Speaking in my first year, first semester in college just to "get it out of the way."

The teacher started off with "you're all going to look like idiots and embarrass yourselves, and you'll have to get over it. Best you do it here now rather than in front of coworkers in a few years. She gave us skills and techniques that I still rely on today, and most importantly, the opportunity to practice.

I was a introverted going in to college, and that class didn't turn my into an extroverted social butterfly in 4 months. However, I have never been paralyzed with fear when required to talk in front of a crowd, and that has been invaluable in my career.

If kids were more aware how much public speaking is tied into their social and especially romantic life later they’d all be majoring in public speaking :)

I second this.

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you for posting this. It drives me absolutely freaking crazy when people do the "Oh, I'm just not _____," having essentially decided they are not _____, and therefore will never learn or change.

Like every time I hear "Oh I'm just not a math person." It's not that I expect everyone to like math because I do, not at all. But I do expect people to not artificially limit themselves. :/

> But please withhold you woe

as a side note, "woe betide you" roughly means "you're in for a very bad time", not "I feel sorry for you".

I used to throw up and faint as a youngster, when having to do talks. Was unable to call people on the phone for years. Anxiety is a bitch.

However, the only way out is through. I confidently speak in front of 100’s regularly. I can pick up the damn phone (still a twinge of anxiety, but nothing like it was). The cure that works just seems to be “do it until it’s mundane”.

As an aside, it’s vital from the career perspective. You can’t let fear, no matter how extreme it feels, stop you. It’s a terrible cliche, but still true “no courage without fear”.

If you aren't capable of this, in most careers you won't be able to use your degree anyway. The only other even marginally acceptable compromise is something like the essay portions of what used to be sit down tests with only pen and paper, but longform and supervised closely.

(Note I say this because optimally, this encourages less "supervisory" desires by others later in one's career. If your peers and overseers get out of your way, maybe you will relax more and not feel so anxious all the time. Sorry for the second comment not an edit, testing new HN clients.)

Classic “get over it” condescension. Some people are unable to control their strong physiological reaction to in-person judgement. Go tell professional orchestra players who rely on propranolol to control their stage fright to just grow up and start becoming a “proper functioning adult.”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.70031

https://www.thecrimson.com/column/a-night-at-the-symphony/ar...

I’m a generation younger but I concur. I hated presenting and my anxiety was crippling. But the solution for that is to practice more, not to avoid it.

I have some anxiety about public speaking or presenting to a group. Not debilitating but more than normal, or so I feel. But I find that once I get going it fades. Starting off is the peak of stress. So if the examiners are trained how to encourage a person to start talking, perhaps with some introductory conversation, and when questioning not being confrontational, that might help. The goal is to find out what they know, not how polished their presentation or debating skills are.

Would it help to be interviewed in a room where there is no other person, and you can be seen through a camera and communicate through magnetic speakers?

Same. The focus on written exams rated blindly and uniformly at the US higher education system always puzzled me. I guess that's the only way to scale things up when you pay professors and teachers living wages?

Yes, I did Physics, Geometry infront of the committee to explain my answer. Language course was written under a dictation, one mistake would cost you a point out of 5. So you had to be flawless on everything, spelling, punctuation, structure, etc. I aced my physics and language, but got a C (3) in geometry, I fumbled on one question.

It does indeed sound great except that everyone was corrupt to the bone

This happened to me back in the 1990s when I was assigned presenting Boltzmann machine to the class. I read up on it naturally, could explain each step in isolation but couldn't still quite internalize how it all came together. But as I was presenting it, all suddenly clicked into place. It was remarkable transition from loosely connected foggy concepts to instant clarity which made me break mid sentence. Once re-composed I couldn't help but notice that the manner of my presentation has changed.

The professor (strict uncompromising man hated by most of the class) then remarked, "now I see you really figured it out".

> I expect a lot of the social anxiety can be mitigated by arranging things so that students get a chance to know the examiners and build a rapport with them ahead of time.

That's not my experience. Standing in front of somebody who's been your teacher and you might look up to is way scarier than some rando.

I doubt the question here is about willingness, but inability due to real medical conditions. Assuming real and sufficiently severe ADHD.

Treating many ADHD adult students some did take advantage of accommodations available to them.

Problems with test-taking varied, but common issues were getting distracted by extraneous stimuli in "regular" classrooms. Frequently ADHD students were slow readers and really did need/use extra time. But the biggest problem was test-taking anxiety, often quite prominent, contributing to difficulty with tests.

Interestingly, more than not ADHD students were reluctant to ask for accommodations. Some never availed themselves of this benefit. Others only used part of the options they could use.

In my practice were a number of ADHD adults admitted to nursing school, some having serious academic difficulties and eventually asking for accommodations. The assistance was effective. Notably, none of these student-patients failed or dropped out, all graduated. A pleasant footnote to add is a subset of these nurses developed exceptional skill earning them leadership positions in their institutions.

Reputable clinicians wouldn't give an ADHD diagnosis or support academic accommodations without sufficient clinical evidence.

Oh, at least in the post Soviet tradition of oral exams, you are given plenty of time to think and prepare your argument before you start an actual conversation with the examining professor. And if you need to think more during the exam to answer a tricky question, the professor just shifts to talk to another student who is ready to present their case for the time being. So it is less of a public speaking and more of a conversation where you can take a pause to think through an argument, or a proof, or a problem.

as someone with ADHD who always finished exams first or was the designated spokesperson for group presentations...

I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to.

Either you know the material or you don't, anything taking a lot of time is borderline stuff where you're scrapping for points you might not deserve in the first place lol

> college here gives students with ADHD double time on exams

No offence, but this is a ridiculous thing to get worked up about. Various neurological conditions exhibit in people just being “slow” in exams. No one ever diagnosed me with anything (probably too long ago), but teachers somehow understood that I was one of these and gave me extra time on exams.

I didn’t want it (who wants to be in an exam a minute longer than required!). But I did need it through high school. In university I was able to complete in time (mostly); I suspect because I had practiced doing exams so much by then that I’d figured out how to optimise for time (maybe everyone knows this and I was just very slow to learn it?).

I’m someone who excelled academically, and it was an important part of my identity at that time. And I do remember exams (before teachers gave me more time) where I’d get a lower grade as I’d only completed 70%. It was incredibly painful; I knew the material, if only I could get it down on paper in time! (I’ve also been an incredibly slow writer). Extra time for someone who struggles to complete on time isn’t cheating - it’s allowing people to demonstrate what they can do.

European universities also have accommodations and extra time etc. And yes it's an arms race. Though at some point it will simply inflate away the value of the degree, but educators will stand there baffled, not understanding how it could happen.