I learnt something this week. Well, that’s not quite true — I had been suspecting this for a while, but as of this Wednesday, I’ve finally gathered enough evidence.

I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know a broad range of viewpoints through school and my surroundings. That becomes self-perpetuating after a while: once you realize that, in many situations of life, what you assume to be true — because your parents / teacher / friends all have been saying it is — may be far less black and white than that, you learn to leave the circle-jerkfest, gather information, analyze it and form your own thought. I know this. I try to challenge the status quo all the time. And yet, there are things so obviously true and self-evident that I don’t question them. What a mistake.

One such thing assumed to be true: that I’m not good at presenting. Why would I think such a thing? Because whenever I tried, I felt that utterly sucked. And when I asked others, they agreed. Sure, I was encouraged to “practice”, but the unspoken, implied vibe I always got? That I’ll always be mediocre at it. There is lots of common valid wisdom about how to improve your presentation skills. Avoid putting too much on your slides. Make eye contact with your audience. Always hold something in your hands. Never stare at the projection canvas. When making pauses, emphasize them to give everyone — not just yourself — a chance to think about what you’ve just said. All sound advice, and much of it is conveyed at school. But one thing isn’t: pick a subject you’re passionate about.

It doesn’t matter how much you royally suck at telling your classmates about how the assassination of Franz Fredinand of Austria ultimatley led to World War I, because even if you’re a history buff, chances are you don’t find that subject any more exciting than your audience does, and acting as if it is just isn’t gonna work well. Seriously, it won’t. Acting and speaking are two entirely different things.

As I said, I’d been suspecting this to be true for a while. But when I held a presentation on relational databases to a class on Wednesday, for 35 minutes, with most of the students intently listening, several telling me afterwards that it was fantastic, and one going so far as to say that he’s never had someone explain it so well, I finally knew.

You’ll still be nervous ahead of it. You’ll still want to avoid throwing up. You’ll still feel relieved afterwards. But believe you me, as long as you love what it is you’re talking about, you can blow everyone’s socks off. And you might even look forward to the next time.