If you make a fool out of yourself, you don't need to drop it. Actually, coming back after making a fool of yourself with reaffirm that things don't fall apart into a black hole if you end up doing something horrible during a speech. It just goes on. I got my GED and never gave a speech before. My college speech class was the first. I cried during some of my speeches. CRIED. And shook like a mad woman.. It was awful. I mean one of the speeches, I sobbed through my words. My hair was falling out in clumps and I was just not having a good time with that and my other 4 classes on top of it made it more stressful.

But for some reason I just kept going. And got an A. After that class I was able to give speeches in following classes normally. I could make eye contact and laugh and just Do it without much hiccup. I just gave a speech 2 weeks ago and an older gentlemen going for his masters in the class remarked that I seemed super calm, even though I wasn't that calm lol. After a different presentation I gave in an art class ( it was a 10 minute powerpoint presentation) i heard guys near the restroom saying it was a good presentation, which made me feel really good (and surprised).

What changed is that I stopped treating the physical act of talking like it was so important. I treated what I was talking about as important. That made me feel and seem more natural for sure. Well.. A lot more changed than that, i also learned to just say what I want to say rather than doing the "script reading" deal, limiting thoughts about giving the speech to the bare necessary (overthinking can be a issue) and so on. So even though the class sucked it payed off.