date posted: may 2025
disclaimer: this writing has not been edited and take it with a grain of salt.
5/3/2024
Since I was younger, I’ve always decided to label myself as being “shy.” I saw “shy” as a positive quality; it was how the smart, cute girls in my superficial short stories were always described. So, on the 1st day of 1st grade, I knew exactly what I was going to write on the skimpy line of the yearly “Getting to Know You” which asks you to describe yourself in 3 words. Easy, I’ll just put “shy, creative, intelligent.” Boom, that was what my 7 year-old self wanted to be.
I was never truly shy though. I was somehow able to make a lot of friends, though sometimes my friendships became stale. (Hey, I was an immature 1st grader.) I would talk to certain people when I wanted to, and I got my teachers to like me as a hard-working, sweet little girl.
This perpetuated “virtue” of “shyness” continued throughout my school years. My parents enrolled me in a Democracy-touting private school on a whim. In addition to trying to figure out the difference between an object and a predicate-nominative, our weekly schedule consisted of 2 hours of a class called “Speech.”
This class quickly became one of my most dreaded hours. Every week we had to memorize some fancy poem written by a sad, miserable poet that just made no sense. Then we would have to get up in front of the class and present the poem word-for-word in front of 30 other 4th graders. And it counted for a grade! We had to talk at the right rhythm, not look bored, vary how we exercised our vocal cords, talk at the right volume… When in my hands, the unforgiving rubric always bears a hastily scrawled red two-digit number, usually in the low 80s.
Now, the grade wasn’t the worst part. But those 30 judging, harsh pupils focused on me always haunted me. I would get the butterflies a few hours before I was supposed to present, despite practicing my poem numerous times on the car. And whenever I stood in front of the class, I could always feel my knees shaking, my sweaty palms that needed to grab my skirt, the dry taste in my mouth, and all these thoughts about how I would mess up.
Public speaking just wasn’t for me. At the end of the year, we had the speech festival, and in 4th grade, I was disqualified! I’ve used this anecdote wittingly in my personal statements this year. Here’s a quote:
“Numbers…” began small 4th grade me, reciting the short poem for our school’s annual speech festival contest. In front of my classmates, I listed out how numbers were used in all parts of our lives, from clocks to money. After finally finishing the last word, I looked over at my teacher. He narrowed his eyes to read the stopwatch and told me my poem took 58 seconds, 2 seconds off the minimum requirement of 1 minute. Thus, because of the numbers, my speech about numbers was disqualified from the competition.
But how could I blame the omnipresent zeroes, ones, twos… for my mistake? So, my only path was to follow the proverb, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” I invested myself into discovering the juicy secrets of numbers, learning about their inner turmoil and their mischievous characteristics.
My parents tried to get me better at speech because of my furious hatred for the class. I took a summer camp and regular class with a local learning center, but I got quickly scared out of it when it got a bit difficult and we needed to memorize our speeches. In 5th grade, I recited Winston Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat” speech; at least this time I wasn’t disqualified, but I didn’t do so well either. Then lucky me, COVID hit and I could hide again.
COVID meant a long time without social interaction. Instead, my friend became the Internet, and I stumbled upon personality tests! Ah, my time again to see my introverted traits. Questions about partying and speaking to strangers were easy to answer. I’ve taken the test probably twice, and both times give me INTP. Splendid, I thought, I’m really an intelligent, deep thinker right? Fits my love for math!
So I came back to the real world in 8th grade. Speech classes resumed, this time I was less anxious mostly because I felt much more comfortable with my peers. The bullying incident of 6th grade was over, and late night Discord conversations made me feel closer to my classmates. Also, our speech teacher was a jolly, vociferous man who never ceased in encouraging us. Then our speech festival prompt that year was very messy, and I gave some weird speech about cutting the California gas tax. And I was off to high school!
Making friends again was quite easy. Academics were hard but manageable. Public speaking wasn’t even that important anymore right? Well, my mom forced me into joining some sort of “leadership” club, so I chose the TED-Ed Student Talks Club. It was once a month, so that was okay. And lots of the meetings were canceled too because of breaks and disorganized leaders. I would usually just sit in the back of the classroom, listen to others ramble on and on, and mumble two or three words. The club advisor was just my English teacher, but the members were mostly upperclassmen. When asked whether I wanted to give a talk, I immediately backed down. I had just escaped speech classes at my old school; I was just not ready to go out and give a whopping 10 minute speech?
But inside, my freshman year as a part of the club really moved me. Listening to the seniors talk about their experiences in their confident voices made me envious and inspired me to rethink my choices. I wished one day I could just spontaneously talk about what I wanted to; all my thoughts indeed felt trapped inside me, solely because I hated the process of conveying them. I listened to Garv recall his shifting attitudes towards gun control and Allison retrace her teaching efforts in Africa.
End of freshman year, I felt more comfortable with myself. And I met Maya, a junior at the time, who was proposing a TEDx event at our school. She shared both my electives with me, was so good at talking, excelled at DECA, and was a true persuader. I indeed looked up to her, and we quickly became friends. She proposed that we continue to lead the TED club together in 10th grade, and I happily oblige. What could go wrong? I willingly took a risk to overcome my fears. And today I’m so happy I did.
Over the summer we advertised and promoted our club, collecting 10ish members. Towards the end of summer, I went to G2 where I had a blast and many thought-provoking conversations. Then our biweekly club meetings rolled around, and Maya and I got to work to draft our club plans.
We had to continuously postpone our suggested date for the event. Maya had wanted December, and the voice in my head was telling me this was way too early! Our school administration agreed, postponing our event to 2024, then to May of 2024. I worked tirelessly drafting slides, pouring over past TED talks, making timelines, taking notes for our club meetings, and coordinating details, all while creating my own talk – about math!
At first I wanted to solve an AIME problem in my talk. Then I bombed the exam, and my perspective towards math shifted to something more abstract, intuitive, and natural. So I made some funny jokes about math-haters, proved the angle bisector, talked about the beauty of math, and math’s practicality. The whole drafting and memorizing process was pretty hard, but working through it was so much fun. And I learned of my acceptance to PROMYS on April 26, one of our club meet days, making me even more ecstatic to pour my heart out for this opportunity I had mindlessly stumbled upon a year ago.
Then finally, May 3rd came. I was still living the highs and lows of my summer program decisions. And in a blink, the big day finally came. I was quite nervous, but one difference was in how I had ZERO stomach butterflies. Just feelings of nervousness and excitement, with the latter dominating the former. And another key distinction was in where my nervousness was coming from. I was mostly worried that my recording would not be great if I messed up. I was confident I wouldn’t freeze up as I could easily improvise something out. The stage had been perfect the night before; it was just waiting for us to stand on it in front of our sold-out event and give the speeches we had been working on for months.
Once the clock hit 2:00, Maya and I headed down to change. I wore my mom’s heels, and I surprisingly was able to run in them to the Grove to practice my speech. It went well as I easily professed my love of math to the neighboring trees. I was ready. I was going to do this. I was going to have the best time on that stage to tell everything why math nerds are cool.
The influx of people coming into the theater was indeed surprising. First, it had been jaw-dropping to hear that tickets had been completely sold out. But as Janelle played some soft chords on the piano and the audience trickled in, the realization of the event Maya and I had spent hours planning for was exhilarating. I gave up scrolling through my speech on my phone; I was going to be great.
The emcees introduced the event. Maya gave her talk on business, Krishna on neuroscience (he froze two times but was able to quickly recover!), Charan on fear of public speaking (how ironic! But his speech was so moving and relatable). Then it was my turn. As Charan finished his speech, I switched the mic on, seeing a faint green light shining through my dress. “Here to talk about everyone's favorite school subject, math, is Anna!” I strode across the stage to the bright red circular rug.
Close your eyes. As I said that first line, my voice felt remarkably raw. I fiddled with my mic, but it didn’t seem to project my voice in any way. Hey, maybe my mic was working and I was hallucinating, I thought to myself. Whatever, the show must go on! And I used every inch of my body, my hands, my vocal cords, my eyebrows, everything. I was fully engrossed in my speech, I was completely unaware of the 100 people watching me, only when Mr. Meyeorwitz chuckled a few times that gave me reassurance that I wasn’t just a crazy sophomore ranting about math. I deviated from my script a few times, but that left me unfazed. Only one part made me concerned, I accidentally said that the ratio of two successive terms in the Fibonacci sequence EQUALS the golden ratio, which was fundamentally incorrect. Whoops, I thought, probably can’t send my talk to Euler Circle anymore. And I was done. I was telling people that life is full of meaningless problems, and that math nerds really aren’t that weird. And I uttered the words “Thank you.” I rushed out the stage as the emcees announced intermission. Ms. Myers came to tell me how great my speech was and how my mic actually didn’t work and how I would get rerecorded and…
That was fine, I said. Then, people started complimenting me for my speech, saying that I’m good at public speaking. That was one thing that really surprised me. All my life, I’ve been afraid of it, and somehow my speech wasn’t a flop! Even my parents were completely surprised at how I was able to deliver that well, so that definitely inflated my ego a bit haha!
Anyways, the point of all this rambling is how my public speaking journey reached a turning point on Friday, May 3. I am truly indebted to my parents who pushed me to go on this journey, Maya & Ms. Myers for always believing in me, and all the school admin who made this possible. This journey is definitely not the end though, as I will be leading the club for next year! I am just reflecting on how far I have come :) I really think that my 4th grade teacher would be astonished if he were to hear the 10 minute TEDx talk about math problem-solving that I gave this time. And even my parents said they were wholeheartedly surprised that I could stand on a stage and flawlessly talk about math for so long! We ended the day with a trip to Haidilao (yum!), and I was still elated with the success of our event. So long to next year!
3/21/2025
Wow, it’s me almost a year later to talk about my second TED talk! My second TED talk was very inspired by the whole TED talk about my TED talk I wrote up there. Basically I talked about how you can become a counterexample to a label that might be keeping you trapped, and I loosely strung some sort of connection to Z adjoin sqrt(-5), one of my favorite tidbits from PROMYS! I'll be forever grateful of what giving a TED Talk has granted to me, and hopefully this bit of writing inspires you to take a step outside your comfort zone :)