More than a Performance by Brigette

More than a Performance by Brigette - May 2026 Scholarship Essay

For a long time, the thought of public speaking was my absolute worst nightmare. As someone who is naturally more reserved, the idea of standing in front of a room full of people—knowing every single person was watching me—felt like a mountain I could never climb. Every time I had a class presentation, it felt like a high-stakes battle where I was just waiting for something to go wrong. I didn’t see it as a chance to share my ideas; I saw it as a chance to fail. What finally changed for me was a major shift in how I looked at the whole thing. I stopped thinking of it as a "performance" and started looking at it as just a conversation. I realized that people aren't usually waiting for you to mess up; they actually want you to do well because they want to hear what you have to say. Once I focused more on the message I was sharing and less on how "perfect" I looked, the pressure started to lift. To get to a place where I felt comfortable, I had to start small. I began speaking up more in small group projects and forced myself to participate in class discussions. It was a process of getting "real-world" experience—basically just getting my feet wet and realizing that even if I stumbled over a word, the world didn't end. I learned more from those little awkward moments than I ever did from just practicing in front of a mirror. Today, even though I still get those "butterflies" before I speak, the challenge feels completely manageable. I’ve learned how to take that nervous energy and turn it into focus. Overcoming this fear taught me that most things are only as scary as you make them out to be in your head. By focusing on the purpose of what I’m saying rather than my own anxiety, I turned a huge weakness into one of my biggest strengths.