Fear Factor

As promised, I'm here again on Tuesday. I apologize for the delay because I was stuck with some work in the morning. Anyway, I'm here now and without wasting any more of your time and attention I'd like to address a very important issue. The fear of speaking in public.

It is very easy to go into that shell and it usually happens at an early stage in life. As you grow, you realize that you lack the confidence for speaking out loud in front of a group of people when everyone's attention is focused on you and they're listening to what you have to say. The frequency of these situations will only increase as you move ahead in life. So you have to break out of the shell as soon as possible. It looks like a difficult job, but if you follow a few simple rules it's a piece of chocolate cake.

Rule no. 1 - TRY
What is the worst that can happen? There are some people who might laugh at you for stammering or stuttering (personally I despise the type who do) and will forget about it by the next day. What you gain from this is a sense of accomplishment. You TRIED. That's the only thing you need to do.

Rule no. 2 - TRY AGAIN
Imagine yourself standing beside an escalator that is going up. When you try, you step on to the escalator. A failure is the equivalent of taking a step back on the rising escalator. You are still going up, it is not a setback, it is a lesson that will help your climb.

Rule no. 3 - THEY ARE JUST NORMAL PEOPLE LIKE YOU
The group of people you are addressing are just like you, humans who can see, hear and speak the same way you can. They aren't any reality show judges passing judgment on every vibration emerging from your vocal chords. It isn't the end of the world if you fumble or falter, they would too, anyone would.

Rule no. 4 - IT'S OK TO BE NERVOUS
Confidence and nerves are inversely proportional to each other. The more confidence you gain, the less nervous you will be. You might be the captain of the Debating Team but you will still be nervous on a big occasion. Your nerves will get used to it soon enough, just follow the simple rules.

I'm looking forward to a forum where people can put forth their problems and help us help them.

Until next time, keep trying.
Sid

P.S. - Congratulations to the Lingua Franca Team for a hugely successful orientation program. Hope it gets better and better.

P.P.S. - I am slightly disappointed by the lack of posts on this blog. People other than Deepak should also contribute. (Nice template Deepak, well done)

New Logo!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the new logo of Lingua Franca. We did not have good quality copies of the previous logo, so i remade it keeping intact the theme of the mediating man. I've changed his body though, given him a more masculine frame (a shield for a chest) and golden color for body. The new logo has been used in the identity cards and the certificates that we've got printed.

By the way, i've never quite understood the meaning conveyed through the logo. What does the meditating guy stand for? Anyone has any ideas?

Inchoation 2.0

After having been made to believe that our orientation program is jinxed, the relief of having conducted a successful event can’t be put down to words. But more on why the event almost got canceled later.

We started our preparations about a week back when we got to know of our event date. Since every society in college wanted to conduct their orientation programme before others, there was a clash amongst the presidents and dates were ultimately decided through a lottery system of picking up chits. And when it’s left to luck, you know what happens. Hell, something had to go wrong. We ultimately had a choice between two dates – 3rd(which was too early and possibly a holiday due to Ganesh Chaturthi) and 18th(which was a bit too late).

No marks for guessing, we took a blind chance and started preparing for 3rd. Special credit goes to our president for that. We christened the event Inchoation 2.0 (Thank you Aastha for such an peculiar name, it’s irresistible and Thank you Garima for giving it a techno-savvy feel) Here’s one more compliment, the Dean said – “I claim to have a very good vocabulary, but I have not heard this word before..”

So we began with the basic publicity. And then started deciding the events we were going to have. Somebody came up with the idea of launching a movie club at the orientation programme. Nandu prepared a fun Crossword, other rounds like Voice Recognition, Dubbing Scenes, Picture Quizzes were also finalised in the next few days. The idea was to keep the event simple, and host it well.

I must mention the second year students, especially the girls who toiled away days and nights to make sure the event is publicized well. Little did we know that the event was going to be such a success.

No Reservations

Hi everyone. I don't know how many people actually read this blog but if there is a blog then it demands that you write stuff in it! An un-updated blog is as good as attending class just for the sake of getting attendance, there is no point to it. So to help change that I'm going to try and post on a weekly/monthly basis (depending upon the time I can spare) and I'm going to call my column "No Reservations".

For those people who know me I don't need to give an introduction, for those who don't know me, my name is Sid and that's about it. I'll share my experiences with you about stuff that I think would have helped me if someone would have told the same to me when I had certain reservations and was generally a shy and quiet kid. Coming out of that mould isn't as hard as it looks. But as with all journeys, the first step is the hardest.

So let's embark on this journey together and see how far we can go. But remember I can only show you the door, you have to enter it (yeah I'm a Matrix fan).

Cheers
Sid