Introduction

Every person or animal, when faced with a situation perceived as dangerous, instinctively responds with the fight or flight response, manifested as stress, fear, and/or anxiety. Over the course of evolutionary history, this was a valuable biological response in the struggle for survival. Unfortunately for instructors, this is their natural response when getting in front of a large audience of unfamiliar students. Even the most experienced professors with extremely well regarded classes say they always feel a bit nervous the first day, even if they have taught the same class for as long as ten years. Getting nervous is a natural response to meeting a large group of new people in a new environment. Even the most experienced professors experience anxiety of some sort, but they have learned how to use the energy given by the fight or flight response to energize their lectures, controlling but not eliminating their. Even Mark Twain, a renowned orator and public speaker, writes about the anxiety he felt when facing a crowd for the first time in San Francisco (see http://www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts/ri078.html (pop-up) or or http://www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts/speeches/mts_firstappearance.html(pop-up) ).

When responding to a perceived threat, the body readies itself to deal with a potential danger by releasing the hormone adrenaline and entering a state of high physical arousal. The physiological response to fear caused by the adrenaline rush includes: increased heart rate and breathing, butterflies or upset stomach, dizziness, dry mouth, sweating, tremors and shakes, and dilated pupils. You are probably thinking that this sounds pretty bad, but still it is a common response faced by thousands of people each day. We can’t control the amount of adrenaline our body releases in response to a perceived danger, but we can control its effects and how we deal with the physiological responses. Below is some discussion of how to best deal with the anxiety we feel when getting in front of our class and some tools that will also help you through the semester.