Teaching the Atomic Age: There's a reason why I'm not a professor.

In one week I am set to lecture my peers on a historical event. I have chosen to teach what I know and that is the Atomic Age, specifically the circumstances surrounding Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

For those of you who don't know this, I have a bachelor's degree in history. I know. Super useful, but I was raised in a family full of history buffs. It just seemed like the right specialization at the time, however, I did not get a teaching degree with my BA.

I realized early on that keeping me out of a classroom full of children who have their crazy parents backing them was probably a good idea. I have a bad habit of telling people who criticize me to "go fuck themselves" or to make some kind of sarcastic, passive aggressive comment. No seriously. I do. Also, I cuss when I try to talk about historical events, which is something that most parents would be unhappy about.

On top of that, public speaking scares the crap out of me. I have a hip flask that I keep full of vodka and it has been very tempting for me when faced with the possibility of public speaking to take a snoot full before getting behind that podium. But I have never actually done this because I get even more obnoxious after I've had a couple of drinks. This is why I usually drink at home in my apartment while yelling all kinds of profanities into my Turtle Beach Headset. (I often threaten to break off certain "sexual play things" in people's orifices if I feel that their assassination attempt was in cowardice.)

But now, I have to give this lecture to a group of my peers to complete grad school. This is the last thing that I wanted to do while here at Pitt and while I was encouraged to give it on something related to library and information science, I realized that I'm not passionate enough about anything in my field to actually give a lecture on it.

Anyone have some advice on how I can get through this without taking a shot from my hip flask before getting behind that podium?