Natasha Abrahart, a second-year physics student at Bristol University, killed herself last year on the day she was due to give a big assessed presentation. The 20-year-old, whose inquest is this week, had twice before tried to kill herself at university. Natasha suffered from acute social anxiety and had struggled with presentations in the past.
With employers emphasising the importance of communication skills, assessed presentations are now standard practice on university courses. Natasha was certainly not alone in feeling terrified about this sort of public speaking.
Lisa Parks (not her real name), a second-year management student who has taken a break from university because of depression and anxiety, says panic about an assessed presentation triggered her mental health problems. “I had some time off from my course due to sickness. When I discovered I was returning to another presentation assessment, I remember going home and crying. I had several panic attacks,” she says.
She adds: “When I am presenting I can hear my voice echoing in my brain and I sweat like mad. It feels so unfair to assess someone on how they are reacting to speaking in public.”
Eleanor Storton, a third-year student of media make-up artistry at the University of Salford, agrees. “Presentations make me feel awful. I can’t sleep or eat, and I’ve had panic attacks before presenting. I’ve spoken to my tutors about it, but it doesn’t really help, as I still have to be assessed.”
A GP who used to work in a Russell Group university, and asked not to be named, says, typically, she would see students with presentation-related anxiety once or twice a week. She says it affected students on all courses, from engineering to law, with even drama students suffering from “high pressure to stand out”.
“For some students we prescribe beta blockers to help on the day of the presentation,” she says. “They are safe and mean you don’t have to stand up to speak with huge sweat patches soaking your shirt.”
She says some students want a letter excusing them from presentations owing to anxiety – but most GPs are not willing to agree to this if presenting is a part of a formal assessment.
She says many universities aren’t doing enough to support such students. “Why aren’t more universities teaching public speaking as a skill if it is an important part of students’ courses?” she asks. “It’s very human to be terrified of this stuff as it makes you very vulnerable.”
Prof Steve West, vice-chancellor of the University of West of England, insists that presentations are an important part of university learning. “Employers are not only interested in degree classifications and subject knowledge, but also graduates’ ability to communicate, problem-solve, work in teams, present or pitch and so on. If we are to prepare students for this we need to offer opportunities for them to develop those skills.”
He says universities need to bear in mind that not all students are natural presenters. “I certainly wouldn’t advocate assessed presentations until students have settled in, made friends and developed an understanding of what is expected and how to get additional support,” he says.
West’s university, based in Bristol, offers presentation coaching, starting with small exercises and building confidence until students feel they can tackle a whole presentation. He says that to begin with, students practise public speaking as part of a group.
Down the road at Bath University, Ben van Praag, the university’s skills course leader, runs presentation courses for students and staff who want them, including strategies for coping with anxiety. Academic departments draft in Praag’s colleagues to run presentation skills sessions for their students before they set a graded presentation. Bath also offers drop-in one-to-one support for students with presentations.
Van Praag says many other universities, however, offer far less support. “We try to emphasise that anxiety and fear of public speaking are completely normal. I’ve been a teacher for 20 years and I still feel nervous every time I give a lecture to a new group,” he says.
Diana Hopkins, co-author of The Academic Skills Handbook, who works at Bath, agrees: “Mark Twain said there are two types of public speakers, those who get nervous and those who are liars. It would be strange not to be nervous but students can learn to deal with that.”
Hopkins does not agree that students studying science, such as Abrahart, might be more likely to find public speaking daunting. “I’ve seen brilliant presenters and very nervous ones across all the disciplines,” she says. “And in fact a humanities student might well have more difficulty being concise and sticking to time than a science student.”
Meanwhile, Amy Phillips (not her real name), who has recently completed a degree in criminology at Middlesex University, is grateful that the university forced her to face her fear of public speaking.
Phillips, who has a history of anxiety, says: “It is not just having to stand up and speak, but also the fear of judgment.”
She describes one “nerve-racking” presentation: “I had seen other people present and some students picked at every aspect of the person’s presentation, even down to the way they were standing or how they didn’t make much eye contact throughout. This preyed on my mind.”
Phillips contacted her lecturer to explain her panic, and was pleasantly surprised how much help she was offered. She was able to postpone her presentation to a day when no one else was presenting, and to a time slot when fewer students were expected to turn up.
“After I’d done it, it was as if a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. A few classmates even approached me to say how good it was and to ask me to explain some of the concepts I had used,” she says.
