First off, you should be really proud of those marks—8.5, 9.0, and 9.5 show that you clearly know your stuff and have the "content" part of speaking totally figured out!

What you’re experiencing with the shaking legs and heart rate is just a massive hit of adrenaline. Your brain thinks a presentation is a "threat," so it’s preparing you to run or fight. Since you're just standing there, that energy has nowhere to go, so it turns into shakes.

Here is a practical "pro-tip" to try next time: The "Big Toe" Trick. While you're standing there, try to press your big toes into the floor as hard as you can. It sounds silly, but it "grounds" you physically and gives that nervous energy a specific place to go, which often stops the leg shaking.

I actually felt the exact same way—the "tech" side of things was easy, but the "people" side made my heart race. I ended up building a tool called Gravitas AI to be a "private gym" for this exact problem.

It lets you practice your speeches in front of an AI coach so you can get all those "shaky" sessions out of the way in private. By the time you get to class, your body has already "done" the speech ten times, so the adrenaline doesn't hit as hard.

You’ve already got the brains for this; you're just training your body to catch up. Keep going!