Do you like your electronic voice?

Seriously. How often do we hear ourselves talk, on the other end of the phone.. or mike? Unless you are a public speaker ( in which case even, you are safely behind the mike, and it is the people sitting in front of the speakers who have to bear the brunt of your oration), or you talk incessantly to yourself on the computer, I suppose there are very few instances where you get to hear your own words. And I am so thankful for that. Bless me with a voice like Lata Mangeshkar and I would think otherwise.

Unless someone has spent an incredible amount of time talking to the answering machine, or the recorder for the new tech-savvy student, I see no way how one can be comfortable with hearing your own voice played back to you and all its irregularities, or simply put talking to yourself. Of course, I am not counting the people who love the e-sound of their vocal chords, or are singers, or simply have a melodious voice. I am talking of people like me, who sound entirely different on the phone or speakers, and don't enjoy it. Is there a word for being audio-genic like photo-genic?If so tell me, 'cos I am not so "that"..

For those, who are privileged to have nothing to do with TOEFL ever in their life (you are lucky, you know that right. lucky, if you never had to write TOEFL or GRE), let me explain. In the speaking section TOEFL, one has to listen/read and respond to 6 tasks that test our understanding of the subject and our communication skills. That by itself is not the issue. The problem lies in the fact that they are all like an extempore - you get 15-30 seconds to prepare and 45-60 seconds to talk.

Now, believe me when I tell you I won every extempore in school. Even the unimaginable ones, that had you compare a train journey to a flight, or wanted to know how you would spend a million dollars (thats a huge amount in school. I was never sure how many zeroes it had. umm.. not sure about it even now). But, the important thing is that, I spoke into a mike, facing an audience of people - I did not have to talk into a headset facing a stern, severe, computer screen where the timer runs crazily - way faster than 45 seconds should.

The worst part of preparing for TOEFL is recording your voice (answers/response) and playing them back to determine how well you did. You are your best judge right?

Unfortunately, this judge of mine (namely myself) is quite prejudiced. I do not, I repeat (in case you missed) do not, like the sound of my voice. In person, it sounds very mature and confident (so I am told, and I readily believe it), but when electronically received /projected it sounds more like a cocky teenager. It also sounds like a misplaced string on a guitar. Sometimes, it takes a life of its own and resembles the voice-over of every cartoon character I despised. It  makes what I say sound immature, half-hearted and sometimes even lost.On rare occasions, it resembles the voice of an old bitchy lady.

I am not kidding guys.. I am not reading too much into my e-voice. If I could I would record something and post it here, but I think I have heard enough of my voice over the last couple of days, and I honestly don't think I would survive public humiliation, let alone the thought that people will replay it again and again and have a good laugh.

Nopes. You just have to imagine it, or hope to talk to me one day on the phone/gtalk/skype/internet/etc and listen to my "completely-not-me" voice. 

Does anybody else ever feel like this?

There have been instances where people who hear my voice on the phone for the first time, politely ask the speaker (me, but they don't realise it, right) if she could please put her elder sister on the phone? They are surprised to hear that that voice intact belongs to me. Humph. I survived teenage somehow..Hey.. no jokes on me if you guys ever get to talk to me in real life or the electronic kind.

So back to the biased judge. I totally despise having to playback my voice and listen to me. I never fiddle with my voicemail for that very same reason. There is only one message ever recorded on my answering machine. If something were to happen to that, most often that not I revert back to the automatic settings. Else, I have to bribe myself to do it, just one more time. I fret and fume if my sis puts the mike close to her speakers when she voice chats (she doesn't use a headset for some reason)..'cos I sound like.. someone else.

Try as I might, I do not enjoy the way I e-sound. As if that did not make me self-conscious, now, I have to rate it. I have to analyse my mistakes and not repeat them. I have to be coherent and organised. On top of it all, I have to stop my brain from going into panic mode and thinking in pig latin, or getting bored or distracted and stopping mid sentence. And I also find it disconcerting to be talking into a mike, staring at a computer screen. I keep telling myself it is not different form my very many voice chats..I think I am going to have some problem with this still. Working on it though.. If you are faced with a similar problem, you could try what I try. Imagine your best-est friend on the computer screen. NB - doesn't help if you think of what she might say, or if your cerebral hemisphere wonders about the whole importance of this imagination..

Wish me luck guys..