Living by myself

Next semester I am going to move out with a friend of mine to our own house. Even though when I came to America all my family stayed in Portugal, since then I have been living with friend’s a family. Although they are not blood related to me, I consider them to be so. I concern about me as much as my real family. That is why this is a huge deal for me; it is the first time I am going to be completely on my own. I feel a mix of emotions. Sometimes I feel really nervous because I know that if I mess up, I cannot really count on anyone to help me. Furthermore, although I have known my friend for over two years, I do not know many things about him such as if he cleans up after himself. Just because we get along very well every time we see each other, it does not mean it is going to work out when we live together. Last year in Portugal, my three closest friends and I spent a week in my holiday house and there was a lot of stress. Even though we had never argued before, during that week we argued many times. On the other hand I also feel very excited about getting my own place. I will have all the freedom that I want. I can go out and come back whenever I feel like and I can have people over all the time. It is going to be a new period in my life that requires a lot of responsibility but hopefully it will be a lot of fun at the same time.

Speaking in public

Communication with other people is something that happens very often in a person’s life. However, for some people, like me, speaking in public is one of the most frightening experiences in life. It is hard to explain why this happens and I often feel stupid when I think about it. For me, to pass a message to four, five people is completely fine. On the other hand, passing the message to 20, 30 people is a completely different story. I can feel the pressure and stress building up just for thinking about it. When it is time to talk in front of the public, I usually start trembling and I repeat myself a lot of times. The weirdest part is that when I was young I was a good public speaker and it did not intimidate me at all. It was when I got older, around ninth grade that this fear appeared. It is really annoying because people with this fear have to work way harder in school. For instance, I had a speech in the school which I put over 12 hours of work. Some people in my class did it in 1 hour and got a better grade than me.