On the second day of class, I had my students introduce themselves. It was to be a little more substantial introduction than normal. They had to write about two pages and present it to the class.

Before they started, I thought I would inform them that I'm not going to make them stand in front of the class very much over the semester. I didn't want to scare them about the rest of the semester.

What I said, I'm afraid, didn't work that well though. I surprise myself sometimes.

What I said:

"I know that some of you are not overly comfortable getting up in front of people and talking, but we're not going to do this all the time this semester. Plus, I assure you that I understand your discomfort. I can almost guarantee you that I'm the shyest person in this room right now, and so, if I can do this every day, I'm sure you can do this this one day....And if there is someone in the room who actually is more shy than me, than you are a freak who should go live in a cave in a desert somewhere. I don't care where."

I'm going to ruin them, I suspect.