Enlightenment du jour!

Thanks to Poodle for leading me to this enlightenment:

When I was in school, I hated doing presentations. However, today I realized that if I were called upon today to make a presentation in front of people, I wouldn't be the least bit nervous. I'd go up there with no pretensions and unapologetically tell them everything I've got. I found this weird, because it never occurred to me that I'd get over hating presentation.

But I realized why just now:

In school, I had to give a presentation on a subject that I wasn't familiar with to an audience where at least one person (the teacher) had knowledge that was superior to mine. I had a chance to do research, yes, but I was assigned the presentation at a point where I didn't have the knowledge yet. And that's not even yet taking into consideration the various ways in which classmates can make your life living hell in middle and high school.

However, in adult life, no one is going to ask me to do a presentation on something I don't know anything about. If anyone asks me to speak to a group of people, it will be because I already have the knowledge, and my audience doesn't. It really has nothing to do with personal confidence, and everything to do with the contexts in which I may be called upon to do public speaking.

(And yes, I still am going to post instructions on how to get DVDs onto iPods, I just had to do an emotionally devastating translation today so it isn't going to happen tonight.)