My First Public Reading

Today, I had the opportunity to read my writing out loud in public for, well, kind of the first time. It seems strange that I’d never done it, aside from reading excerpts to my creative writing classes pre-workshop or reading things to my family or whatever. But I’ve never participated in a poetry slam, never given a speech, really.

I was nominated by my creative writing professor to share my writing at this yearly event where, for four nights, there are casual readings in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library. It was an honor to get nominated by him, although I have no idea how much that counts; did he nominate me over other people in the class, or did he nominate the whole class and wait to see who accepted? In any event, there’s only one other person in the class who I know was also sharing, and even if she was just the only other person who accepted, it felt nice to get the recognition.

I showed up today at 7:00, ready to share an essay I’d published last summer on College Magazine about secondhand grief. As always, I was a little anxious the whole day about the experience. I’ve always had stage fright, which reached its height in high school when I went onstage to play piano at recitals with 50 or so people. Though it wasn’t as big of a deal this time, I was still a little nervous.

It turned out the ‘Café Shapiro’ event was even more casual than I’d realized. Outside of a couple fellow readers’ friends, one reader’s parents, and a couple random people glancing over, there was basically nobody listening to the readings. I didn’t really have a problem with that because it meant less stress for me, but I did wish I’d invited a few people just because it felt so empty. I almost felt bad for the librarians who’d organized it.

So as I went up there and started reading (I was the ninth and last reader), I was only a little nervous. There was a ton of ambient library noise as people walked by constantly, which made it feel less scary. My essay was short and thematically in line with many of the other readings. And, to be honest, almost nobody was listening.

As I was sitting there waiting to go up before I actually read, though, I thought of something that calmed my remaining nerves. I thought about how, in the future, once I’m a famous published author (something I’ve always been unusually confident about), I’ll be doing readings all the time. It’ll be different from this; there’ll be dozens, maybe hundreds, hey, maybe thousands of people. And once I’m there, I realized, I’ll look back on this day, this moment standing in a library near a busy café with a couple random college students glancing over every once in a while and only a few people really listening and obligatorily clapping.

Your college years are the years when you feel like you’re being forced to grow up, like childhood is terrifyingly far in the rearview mirror even though it feels like you are still an ignorant child. It’s helpful sometimes to realize that if you’re having a rough time in college, this doesn’t have to be the stereotypical ‘best years of your life.’ This isn’t the destination. As my smart friend Caroline said, we’re “still in peak transitional years, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.” Sometimes it’s comforting to remember that. Me, standing in the café and reading to an audience of five—this isn’t the end. This is only the beginning.