public speaking

I'm taking a public speaking course - one night a week for the next six weeks. In the first class we got to laugh and cry with each other. Turns out the other eight or nine people are all self-conscious and nervous like me.

Different people from different backgrounds all have different reasons for improving their ability to present themselves in public. There's a teacher who wants to be able to speak more articulately in front of her peers at school meetings. There's a mom who's trying to lose her shyness after years of only speaking to kids. There's a salesman who wants to get a better job. There's a student who's practicing for job interviews. There's a woman who's more terrified of speaking in front of a group than of parachute jumping.  

Yeah, so we're all in this together ... learning to speak so that others want to listen.  Our homework for next week is to give a two-minute opinion piece.  In my opinion, public speaking ... just might be fun.