#intense feeling

December 9: Describe the last time you were surprised by the intensity of a feeling you had about something, or were surprised at how strongly you reacted to something you thought wouldn’t be a big deal.

I’m gonna talk about something that happened to me recently. I had an important event for grad school and was extremely tense about it. It was a mock presentation where I had to explain the first 4 chapters of my thesis in front of a jury of 4 experts and all the other grad students. I’ve previously said that I hate presentations. I was, understandably, very anxious about the whole thing, so I started to rehearse for the presentation many days before the due date. I probably practiced more than 20 times to make sure I could explain things and manage the time properly.

The first time I practiced, I was a mess. However, after the 20th time, I looked confident and made zero mistakes. That’s why the day of the event, I was nervous but I also knew I could do it. When my presentation started, I was in control. I showed no hesitation and proved I knew what I was talking about. Something changed in the middle of the presentation, though. I have no freaking clue what happened, but I started to freak out. The feelings were very intense and I couldn’t understand why, since you’re supposed to be nervous at the beginning and calm down little by little as you speak. In my case, I started to get more and more anxious the more I spoke.

I didn’t forget anything of what I had to explain. I managed to finish but spoke so fast that I took shorter than I was supposed to. I started sweating a lot, A LOT, and my voice started to break a few times. I didn’t feel like crying, but I know my voice sounded like that two or three times. I was in control, but not entirely. It was awful!