Tuesday morning when I got up, I changed up my presentation again, added in a slide, removed a slide, and cut out a chunk of my speech. I had gone from 53 minutes which was too long, to about 35 minutes, which is ten minutes shorter than they told me, but felt more right, but I hadn't had enough time to run through it, especially the new version. Steve was home too much too on Monday and Tuesday morning, so I had to go up front into the guest bedroom and shut the doors and turn on the bathroom fan and try to run through it without stumbling on my words or having to read right off the paper. Finally I got two run-throughs in a row with minimal stumbling, re-wrote my into and my conclusion, got the intro down, halfway got the conclusion down.
Tuesday I left at 4:20 to get down there by 5:30. Except I got 5 minutes away and had forgotten my sheet where I had when to move slides and remind me of what to say when. I turned around like I was in the Indy 500, raced home, grabbed it, and headed back out. Promptly got stuck in traffic, and 465 shut down for 10 minutes. I was supposed to be there between 5:30-5:45, and it started at 6. I was trying not to stress out but I hate to be late and I'm supposed to be the keynote speaker. I pulled in at 5:50, and had my second moment of brief panic. I'm dressed up, and everyone around me is in shorts, jeans, and shirts. I'm like....I'm at a country club in Indy. Of course it's also a golf course and the people I saw weren't all there for my meeting. I decided that even if everyone else there was dressed down, I'm supposed to be the professional presenter, so I should look the part. Then I texted Steve and he told me the same thing. :D
As I'm walking in, I see a familiar face--Morgan, my student is there. She knew I was doing this, and surprised me by not telling me she was coming with the Purdue race team. Then another familiar face-Jim Z came up from N. Carolina when he heard I'd be speaking tonight, and he came up to visit family too. It was a little intimidating doing this in front of people I knew, but it was intimidating anyway. lol
Because of the stoppage of the interstate, several people ran late, so they started the meeting late, which later on meant it was a good thing I cut my presentation shorter than they'd originally told me to. They started with a safe pilot 50 year award for one guy, then did the Air Race Classic sponsorship presentations, and then we had dinner and dessert, and then announcements, and THEN it was my turn. I was really nervous that I'd get up there and go blank. I had rehearsed my opening line a bunch of times so that it would come as naturally as possible and hope that it would flow from there.
The actual speech went well. They didn't have a microphone like they said they would, so I had to really project to get to the back of the room full of older people, but I think I did pretty well with that. I got some laughs, had some interactions with the audience, showed a lot of photos, and told my story. I started with background and ended with a lot of the fun stuff I've gotten to do, airshows and air-to-air photo shoots and some of the veterans I've met, and some of their stories, and the WASP filming, and stuff. I talked about the people who didn't support me and the people who did and what a difference a little support can make in someone's life. At the end of it I asked if anyone had any questions, and nobody did, but Jim Z stood up and said he had a statement, and said that he'd been a T-6 instructor for a long time and done a lot of checkouts, and that I was the best student he'd ever had. Wow. They presented me with a wall hanging of instruments, might be a clock, I'm not sure, I haven't looked yet. Then when I ended, THAT'S when people came up and started talking to me. Quite a few did. They said it was a great presentation (I'm not sure what else you'd say..."That was average, thanks for coming"?), but still. Some of the ladies from the air race said that it was inspirational, and one said she teared up. I'm not sure at what part, but I appreciate that it meant something to her. A couple people used the word inspirational, actually. One lady brought her young son up. He's grounded for medical reasons and they asked for some ideas on how to deal with the grounding while they wait, stay motivated, etc. I talked to them for about 15 minutes and I think I helped. I had quite a few other people come up to me and ask some questions, and everyone was complimentary.
One moment of panic I had was when he started reading my bio before introducing me, and what he covered was basically the first part of my presentation. But I went into more detail than that, so I just took a breath and jumped in and did it anyway.
Kaylee, Steve, and Ethan were all texting me, telling me I had this. One of my opening lines was that I was a better pilot than I was a public speaker, and one of the guys came up to me afterwards and said that he thought if that was a bad public speaker, he wouldn't have a chance himself, said I did great. I didn't stutter, mumble, or pass out, so all in all I think it was a success. And I really don't want to do it again.
I'm going to say, the area where I feel the weakest is my physical appearance. I hate the photos of me. I hate how I look, and I've just tried not to project that or let people know. But I hate it, and it hits my confidence going even down to Texas for the WASP stuff coming up. I'm not going to back out now just because of how I look, but do you know for the last two months I've increased water, exercise, and decreased food amounts, and it hasn't changed a thing? I can neither come to terms with my current situation, nor seem to fix it unless I do something drastic, which I'm trying to avoid, for both my own sake, and Kaylee's. Anyway.
Have you ever heard of Imposter Syndrome? I hadn't until a few years ago. It's pretty interesting. It came up again because another pilot did a survey on it yesterday.
Well, I've been staring at this for awhile, I'm so tired! So I'll just post the photos and go to bed. :) Will see if anything else comes to mind tomorrow after I get some sleep. In the meantime, the next post down is about our trip to Sun-n-Fun and has a pic of Kaylee too. ;)
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