A Quote by Dean Potter

I've just always been terrified of having to speak in front of people. When I used to go in school and then I had to do a report in front of the class and speak, I would freeze up, sometimes I would even like tear up almost and start crying and stuff... couldn't deal.
I liked school, but I used to dread those moments when the teacher would call me up to give an oral report. I forced myself to deal with it and not dwell on the class in front of me - to keep a straight face, give the report and concentrate on getting it right. That's normally how I perform. That's how I am.
I'd always been the confident guy in school. I was good in math and English, but I was still shy. I couldn't get up and speak in front of people. I was asked to do it when I was 10 years old and I burst out crying.
Ninety percent of people's nightmares is standing in front of 1,000 people. Did you know that? And having to speak. You would have thought it would have been a madman tying you up and taking your eyes out.
I got on the high school speech team and everyday I would get up in front of the class and just start talking.
By the end of the semester [in the high school] I was the only one up in front of the class everyday. Actually I could have passed the class four times over because every time you got in front of the class you got extra credit.That was the only class I got an A in and it was the funniest report card because it read Speech - A but everything else was just D, D, D, D.
I was so afraid to even read a paper in front of my classmates. It is very funny because at that point my teachers would never have believed that I could speak in front of an audience of over 2,000 people.
Growing up, I wanted to be a musician. My mother, in typical Filipino-mom fashion, would always make me go up in front of people at parties to sing. Back then, as a kid, I was mortified. In retrospect, I see that doing that as a child helped me get over my fear of being in front of people.
In school I was painfully shy. But as soon as I had to get up in front of the class and give a book report, it was alarming - I'd suddenly be very articulate.
Elvis said, Miss Minnie, do you think it would be out of order if I go up and speak to General Stewart? I've always been such a fan of his. So Elvis went up to speak to the Stewarts.
I never thought I was doing any great work. I never thought I would last. In the beginning, I was terrible. I never used to speak to people. I used to start crying. I was extra sensitive. I would run away home and feel miserable. I didn't know how to behave then. I was touchy. People interpreted it as arrogance.
I like girls who want to get up and dance and don't mind singing in front of my family - you know, silly stuff. Some girls won't eat in front of boys or won't go bowling. They just want to go out and look pretty. I don't really get that. I want someone who is up for having a good time.
[Buckminster Fuller] was quite willing to talk. He'd talk at the drop of a hat.I learned to talk in front of people by listening to the way he did things. Because he would give lessons in how to lecture. He would say, "Never take a note, just stand up and start babbling. And then eventually you're going to be able to make some coherent statements, and so it's like you're vamping. And then people will gradually start to listen to you when this spot of logic shows up in this torrent of verbiage.
When I read out loud in class, it was a joy for everyone else because I would mispronounce things so badly. I used to try to count how many people were in front of me and then work out which paragraph I would have to read out and start trying to learn it. And I would sit there thinking, 'Please let the bell go so that it doesn't get round to me.'
I learned early on that one of the secrets of campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them I would call them by name, but even if I didn't I would still speak to them.
You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.
Writing is a very intimate thing, especially when you write lyrics and sing them in front of someone for the first time. It's like a really embarrassing situation. To me, singing is almost like crying, and you have to really know someone before you can start crying in front of them.
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