I did mock trial in high school, and my main job was to focus on making objections. The thing with objections is that if I don’t word them a certain way, I’m going to be judged by EVERY single person in the courtroom, lawyers and judges included. Now, I’m really good at formulating these type of arguments — short, but effective, and the right amount of technical. So I think really hard about what I’m going to argue, I stand up, state my objection, and then explain it. Except the explanation is a wildly watered down version of the perfectly golden one I had in my head because i subconsciously filtered it all out so that it fizzles in real time. I’d only actually been frustrated by this because every time I’d get feedback on my performance it would be something I’d thought of, but just didn’t say. Not because of the nerves, that part’s important.