02.05.2003 - 1:05 p.m.

Today, for the first time in my life, I stood up in front of a class, opened my mouth, and

Nothing. Happened.

It was supposed to be pretty easy, pretty straightforward. Go and tell them who you are, how you can help them, how they can find you. Turn it over to the guy who runs the computer lab for the rest of the class, and leave. It was supposed to be a bit part, until the lab guy was out sick. Then it became tell them who you are, how you can help them, and everything you know about good practice in web design.

At times like this, the gerbils in my head go, Huh? Web design? We know stuff about web design? They trip, fall out of their wheels, and proceed to skitter around randomly, running into each other and falling down a lot, leaving me with a distinct lack of processing power.

Bah. So once I got my mouth working again, I babbled for fifteen or twenty minutes, turned it over to the lab guy�s assistant, and left, shaking not on the outside but with the entire core of my being. Didn�t even feel the sweat on my back until I got out of the building and started walking back towards my office.

I did an okay job. I said most things that needed to be said, although not necessarily in their best order. Not bad for a lecture on three minutes� notice, right?

I�m just mad at myself. There was nothing hard about it, nothing I haven�t done a hundred times before, just a little less time to think about it. I need to be able to do this without sounding like a fool.

-stonebridge

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