Don't want to fail Comm 101

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I'm taking a required communications class but am not communicative at all. Too late to drop and don't want to fail.

Any suggestions on coping?

Honestly, it's not that bad. Use subjects for your presentation that you are really interested in and know a lot about. Use that aspie ability to recite facts about your interests to your advantage! Another thing, you don't have to make eye contact with the people in the room. A trick I found is to actually stare at the walls just behind the audience. It looks like you are look at the audience when you're really just looking at the wall. Keeps you from getting distracted and you don't lose any points for just staring at your notes.

I was TERRIFIED of my public speaking class but it ended up going very well. I actually wasn't half bad at giving presentations... to my surprise.

When I took my com (is that speech) we all had to go up and say anything for about a half minute just for practice – so I said: there was this tall skinny man with a yellow hat who had a monkey that always got in trouble – and it worked. What do you feel the most cool about – do your topic about that. When I spoke about my favorite rock star (Jim Morrison of the Doors), I became him (very dark and mysterious) and succeeded.

I dropped speech class this time.The biggest thing was the group sessions. The teacher seemed very tough. I thought speech was supposed to be speech, but the class was becoming something more than that and the kind of expectations were quite more than I consider necessary for my career choice (computer science). I plan on taking this required speech course a long time away, maybe over some summer semester, at a smaller, easier college.

When making a speech, all you need to do is give the illusion that you are making eye contact with the audience. There is no way that anyone in the audience can tell if you are making eye contact to any one listener at any time. A trick that I use is to look past the audience. Be careful though to make sure that you do not look at one area for too long. Move your head around or eyes around.

Also, another thing about speaking is that the audience does not know it you made a mistake. If you do make a mistake, do not get flustered or apologize, simply move on. All the audience will think is that it was part of your speech.