I have always considered myself as a quiet person.  I always was a quiet/shy person.  I found that this began to change over the years and although i feel i still am in ways, i have definitely improved.  This is my journey on becoming a more confident and talkable person.

In Year 9 and 10 things you could use to describe me were shy, quiet, to myself, and people thought i was sad or lonely whereas the reality was that i just wasn’t confident enough to talk to people outside of my hugely widespread friend group of four people.  It was odd but i always felt like when i talked to new people, it was bad.  I have no clue why but that was just the thought that went through my head.  A lot of the time i almost enjoyed keeping to myself and not having to put in even the smallest bit of effort in to talking to people other than my 3 main friends.  In the majority of my classes i would go and sit on my own and work alone. There were always opportunity’s to grab a seat next to someone throughout all of my year 9 and 10 but i chose not to, even when i was offered or asked to come over and sit with someone.  This could have put an odd view of me as a person into other peoples heads.

I always felt that keeping to myself was fine and i was perfectly happy to do so until one day when me and my three other friends were sitting on the outside seats in the sun and a large group of people came and sat down next to where we were sitting.  Over time we started to mingle and slowly became more fond of each other.  After about 4 weeks we were chatting away as if we all knew each other for years.  This wasn’t just one new friend, this was a whole group of people that me and my 3 friends could now go and have a friendly chat to anyone at anytime and anywhere.  Looking back, i can now see what i was missing out on, chatting with new people and a variety of people really helped build my confidence which is what i needed and from then i started sitting with people in class and school became a lot more fun and enjoyable.

In year 11 i was a lot more talkative and sociable then i ever had been, yet i was still the one one that kept to himself.  I tried really hard to be talkative in this year because i felt the pressure to be sociable made me feel like an outcast when i didn’t talk much.  All these new friends i had recently made had now been “cemented” in a way and i was starting to get on with a social life.  Around half way through year 11 i started to hang out with these new friends outside of school which just made the bond so much better AND from something so simple like hanging out with these not so new people i felt it developed my confidence in speaking as it lead to talking to more new people.  At the end of year 11 i went on the spirit of adventure which is a 10 day course set on an old fashioned sailing ship.  Here i learnt many skills from tying knots to how to sail the ship.  Somewhere in between those, a huge thing i learnt from this course was interacting with new people i had never met before.  Although this was with new people it still gave me the chance to improve and almost practice talking and making conversation.  Thanks to this adventure i came away with many new friends whom to this day i still catch up with and go and visit.  This showed me that communication is a huge thing weather it seems it to be or not as id made these great new friends over the course of only 10 days.  Returning back to school after the 10 days i felt that i was a lot more talkative and generally just enjoyed being around people for a change, especially the ones i didn’t normal chat to which i think came as a surprise to many.

Out of all of my full completed year of school (which is excluding this year), year 12 was by far my favorite.  I had become so much more talkative that there was a stage where i was the one getting told off by the teachers to be quite.  That year was just a blast hanging out with friends at school and most weekends outside of school.  I also had my waitering job during this year too which looking back, i did enjoy as surprising there were many comments on how great i was at that job and and i received compliments from people like “oh that young man is just so polite and clear with his speaking!”  This raised my confidence even more than i had already done myself.  At the end of my year 12 year i gained my restricted licence which just topped off everything for me as i got this at the start of my crazy long end of year holidays and words can’t even describe how great everything was taking mums car most days and going and hanging out with people and going for swims.  I really just can’t describe how amazing my whole year was because i had improved on something that comes so easily and simply to so many people.  It’s really hard to believe that from just becoming more confident and really making an effort to want to talk that it provided me with a whole lot of friends and the best year of my life.

As you may know i am currently one of the 30 students taking part in the hostel programme here at MAC.  To me this was in so many ways my next big step in improving myself and communication.  Obviously i didn’t just come here for the banter but in a way i did.  I feel like over the course of the year i can become even more confident as i know myself that there are times where i still seem not  very talkative or sometimes it has come across as rude.  I feel that it may come across as rude because the average person would assume i have no problem talking whereas the reality is im still working on it.  It really annoys me when i look back on a conversation or environment where i think my silence or lack of effort to reply gives me across as rude but i’m far from intentionally doing it.  My future aspirations are to always have the effort and confidence to chat anytime and anywhere and therefore not having this sometimes rude aspect about me and to try best my best year.