I’m writing this article a couple of days after giving a TEDx talk in Boise, Idaho. It was a great experience. It took much more work than I expected, but I’m very satisfied with the outcome, and the feedback from family and friends who attended has been very positive. Even though I give plenty of talks as a professor, it pushed me to build skills in writing (I wrote out my script) and public speaking that I hadn’t needed before. The style and expectations were different than speaking in a classroom or at a technical conference. As students, you regularly experience being put into new situations. You are asked to use previous knowledge in a different way. (We see students struggle when equations are written with different variables that make the algebra look totally foreign.) Although it can be painful to be in a discomfort zone, it is a good experience because it enables you to grow further.