I'm an introvert and often shy away from talking to strangers. But interestingly, I've always been pretty good at public presentations. I've received multiple compliments after my presentations. I'm often really confident when presenting my slides. Part of it is because I spend so much time creating content (slides) and in the process, I come up with creative ways to explain different things. I also tend to walk a bit during my talks and make eye contact with the audience and use my hands a lot.

I wish I could be like that all the time so that people could see the real potential and enthusiasm in me, but unfortunately I'm mostly reserved and don't initiate conversations especially with strangers. Aside from love life, it affects my professional life as well—lots of professors thought of me as a low-profile, shy student, but sometimes they'd get a glimpse of what I could be during my presentations and changed their mind.

Recently I started to start having some conversations with people I don't know and man, it feels great! I feel more confident just by talking to and asking peoples' names in the building. I guess the key is that I don't expect these convos to go anywhere. When you're introvert, the circle of friends is so small that people have so much value/influence on you. When you broaden your scope, you start to see other people as points on a sphere—as their value (being special) decreases, so does the fear of saying the wrong thing to them, so you are more likely to start conversations and have fun and see where things go instead of stressing over what you should say and whether they will be offended or not.