Anxiety

The senario I'm going to discuss today, happened on my first clinical placement of the year quite some time ago (I did an early placement) and I'm not sure if any of you guys will find it too interesting, however it had a huge positive effect on me so I'd like to discuss it.
Firstly I should say I have never liked public speaking etc and ALWAYS get soooooo anxious for OSPE's because of my fear :P. Oh maybe its also applicable to mention for some reason I haven't had the same sort of anxiety levels on clinic with real patients so far, I guess we can debate the OPSE stuff till we go blue in the face, but the reality is I think it is really the only way students can be assessed, but for me with many discussion's with lecturers regarding OSPE's and how nervous I would get with them I have found that clinically it has been completely different, I can't explain why, thus again I am no closer to making suggesting anything to improve OSPE's :P. So now to the point and my senario. For my elective placement I completed a teaching placement, in which we assisted the staff in anatomy labs and basic PT skills labs for the incoming GEMs who joined the 2nd yrs this sem. At the beginning of the Pt skills component of the course, myself and my fellow student teacher thingo met with the staff member who would be teaching the GEMs, this person gave us a list of possible things we could be asked to demo to the GEms (ie passive mvts, goni, MMT, walking aids etc). So each morning myself and the other student would step out for 20 mins to prepare incase we were asked to demo these senarios, so normally been prepared we handled it quite well and usually did quite a good job. However one day toward the end of the clinic the Tutor in charge told me I would be demonstrating a senario in 20 mins which I didn't know I would be doing and thus I was not prepared for. Some of you might be thinking whats the big deal? however for someone who suffers from anxiety in these positions, let me assure you it is a big deal :P. So anyways when I was told this, I really was quite angry and was cursing under my breath , whilst i madly tried to prepare for it in a few minutes. the senario was fairly easy in terms of techniques (MMT both heads of pec maj- if you remember that far back we are taught to test in gravity elimated position 1st, then when it is established muscle strength is greater than grade 2 we test in gravity resisted position, so when you add all this together with testing both sides and the 2 different heads of pec maj the whole demo becomes a bit more complicated). Anyways after so long of trying to 'impress' the GEMs with my skills :P haha my biggest fear was looking like a non-competant fool infront of them! So I quickly planned what I was going to do in my head and performed it fairly well (the point for demonstrating these senarios was to show the GEMs what would be expected in OSPE's throughout the course).
Ok now to my point, even though at the time I was hating the tutor who asked me to do it, after finnishing and reflecting on this situation I REALLY appreciated it and felt very grateful, I felt like it really helped me over come my anxiety in situations like this, i also feel it set me in good shape for the coming years clinical based placements.Now due to this occurance I really am looking to put myself in uncomfortable situations as to improve myself as a PT as well as a person. So if anyone who is reading this suffers from anxiety and self doubt in these sorts of situations (probably not at this stage of the year) I really encourage them to put themselves out there and have confidence in their abilities because to get this far in a quite demanding course we must be doing something right. I just wish I had the guts to force myself or been forced to put myself in REALLY uncomfortable situations earlier in my studies as this would have saved me a lot of stressful nights and wasted meals which i threw up :P thanks for reading I hope that wasn't to boring or confusing. take care guys :)