Yesterday was a terrifying day.

I have gotten up and spoken in front of a lot of different people: parents, children, doctors, professors, teachers, and the list goes on.

Never have I, as a professional, formally spoken to students in my field. Yesterday, I delivered the keynote for the opening session of the student conference. I spoke to the students candidly about preparing to move from student to intern to professional.

I was nervous. I remembered how I felt as a student when I felt like someone was trying to “preach” to me. I also knew that this was my first conference presentation, my first time speaking formally to students, and that my end career goal is to teach. Obviously with that goal in mind, I need to be okay speaking to students!

I’m hoping to give this talk in Atlanta at this year’s national conference of the American Music Therapy Association, so I won’t give all the points of the talk, but I will share with you the thoughts I had before, during, and after the talk.

Feelings before: Nervous. My heart was racing, I was frantically checking my watch, when people told me they were looking forward to it, I just smiled, said “yay”, and wandered off. As the time got closer, I became more resigned, and just went.

Starting the talk: My brain was thinking “Oh my goodness, Natalie. Don’t be boring.” Which brought about lots of nervous jokes and random off the top of my head comments that I should probably censor. The upside? I had an engaged and laughing audience (minus the guy with the dark hair who was nodding. Yes, I saw you).

The meat of the thing: I’m not a person who ever writes my speech out. I don’t over prepare. Perhaps I should, but I feel fraudulent if I do. I write out my talking points, the pertinent information, and put it in an outline and that’s how I go. I’m terrified of wandering off topic, so it may not be the best method, but I’ve always received positive response. During this talk, however, I found my groove, and was on a roll. I knew I had a lot of engaged listeners, and wasn’t as worried about hearing myself talk incessantly.

Towards the end: I had some GREAT QUESTIONS!! I always judge a student by the amount of and type of questions that they ask and several of these students were on the ball! I am a horrible judge of my own speaking, so I made sure after I took questions that there weren’t any lingering questions about what I was speaking about. I also asked them if they felt I addressed all the things they expected to hear in a talk like this.

After: Relieved then surprised. I knew speaking candidly to students about the experience of becoming a professional would catch some interest, but I didn’t expect to have so many questions, to get to talk in the hall to a student about her concerns, and to—for the rest of the evening—have students tell me that they were going to call/e-mail/tweet me.

I was glad the talk was over, because honestly, it was of the most concern for me at this conference. I was also glad that it was so well received. Have you ever had a talk you gave that really scared you? What were your thoughts? How did you cope?