I am currantly taking one of my nursing courses that once a week we get together in small groups with our instructor and talk about our assignment and disscuss case studies. This is a course on community nursing.

Today she places a case study on the over head projector and asked me to read it aloud to the class. I know to most of you this isn's a big deal but I don't read aloud. I struggled in grade school with reading and doing it infront of other people really stresses me out. I don't mind if i can read it all in my head first but there was no time for that. I told her that I didn't have my glasses on me and so I could not read the case. She got fustrated at me and said that I need to bring them to all classes. I have glasses but i rarely wear them, I only use them when I am studying all day.

So what do I do next week when she askes me to read aloud in class? I will not do it. Should I just approach her and tell her?

This class requires alot of participation. and I fully participate. I will stand in class act out the case studies and offer my opion to the discussion. I will just not read aloud in class. I am not shy I just have this one issue.

I would speak to her alone because it's not fair to put someone on the spot like that, especially when we all are at different levels, etc. Obviously you know how to read, but reading out loud is not your thing. Hopefully if you speak to her sincerely then she will understand. Good luck.

I wonder if school might be a place where you could work toward overcoming your fear/shyness of reading aloud. It seems that when you are in the workplace, you might find many occasions where you will need to read something out of a chart to a few people or more. My weakness use to be math, but I have made it a point to push myself and get better, and now my skills are actually quite good. I would have never gotten to that point if I didn't think I had to, often times it's better to push yourself past a weakness rather than to just admit defeat to it.

Best wishes!

Adri