When I was in high school, I did a lot of acting in high school plays. I got the funny roles and did well at them. My approach was to act big and to leave enough time for people to laugh. I didn’t do so well with serious roles, and I never understood why. Probably because I put up a funny front because people made fun of me.
I gave speeches, mostly in the speech class we took sophomore year. I was on the speech team, but was not very good in my event, with no help from the coach, who liked his naturally talented folks. The highlight was winning the county competition Voices of Democracy with a speech advocating conscientious objection. “Did they even listen to this?” my mother asked when I won the award. I think they really liked my voice.
I liked being in the front of the room; this is probably why I became a professor. However, I stepped away from acting and speech when I went to college. I knew I was a big fish in a small pond back in Marseilles, my home town. But when I went to University of Illinois, the pond was full of big fish and I knew I was a relatively small fish. The University is a huge campus, with 40,000 students or so, and is a selective university. We were all smart and came with different talents, and I realized mine were not in the direction of acting. So, other than that speech class in college (which was easy for me compared to the one I took sophomore year of high school), I did not go back to speaking or performing in front of large audiences. Unless you count teaching college.
Words Like Me 