A lecturer will ask the audience 'and can anybody tell me what this is?' And she or he is met by an everlasting silence, with people refusing to look her in the eye ... Now the thing is, I'm a very confident person ... I'm very outgoing. I usually volunteer to do presentations but even I felt too awkward to even speak. The atmosphere was toxic silence, which turned into pain when the lecturer would probe the audience ... 'anyone?' I distinctly remember one lecture where the 'anyone?' continued for around two minutes in desperation for the audience to provide her with any confidence and truthfully, it was the most painful two minutes of my life. Half of the audience were already on their phones because they had already given up or were just bored mindless. The other half don't want to speak.(1)
