I'm looking for someone to practice my English conversational skills/ just casual talk
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I'm looking for someone to practice my English conversational skills/ just casual talk Hello everyone, I'm looking for someone to practice my English conversational skills with and to just talk casually about life, stuttering, your dog, your Pokémon card collection, I don't care :). **Let me start with a brief introduction about myself:** My name is Maikel (25M) and I'm coming from the Netherlands. I live in a small city, approximately an hour away from Amsterdam. Since my childhood/teenage years, somewhere in between, I developed a stutter which persisted into adulthood. I describe my stutter as pretty moderate with small/moderate blocks and is heavenly dependent on speaking-situation. If I talk to myself I'm almost completely fluent but in more stressful situations my stuttering worsens (with more frequent and longer blocks). I also noticed that the social environment has a significant effect on my stuttering. In general, my stutter is worse around people who I perceive as 'high-authority' such as a boss etc. Which made me think I have a tendency for social anxiety, which is relatively more common among people who stutter. Mentally I think that I handle my stutter pretty well. Especially in my late teen years my stutter worsened occasionally and this unsettled/frustrated me reasonably back then. Thanks to different forms of stutter therapy (or maybe it is just the age) I managed to control more or less my mental reactions on stuttering. Don't get me wrong, I still have these negative responses to my own stuttering, I just deal with it better :). **Why I'm looking for someone to talk English to:** Last summer I graduated from university and currently have my first full-time job. I'm working as Clinical Research Associate by a small company who specializes in different clinical trial services. Most of the clients are people from big pharmaceutical companies and part of my job is to maintain contact and update these clients about everything what is happing in their trial via meetings. I'm always a little bit stressed before these meetings and in these kind of situations my stuttering is at its worst. Especially the casual, spontaneous talk before you dive in the details is a bottleneck for me. Due to my anxiousness and stress, I feel like my whole brain fills itself with fog and I can't think of the words in that situation, which made me believe I suck at speaking English. I want to prove myself that my English is not that bad and also would like to improve it. But I also would like to meet someone just to casually talk it about all the things in life. In a conforming environment for the both of us :). **For who am I looking for?** For someone, male/female around the same age (preferably non-Dutch) and a somewhat similar situation. Someone who wants to improve his or her English of someone who just want to talk about all kind of stuff, including your experiences with your stuttering. Approximately 1 time per week (half an hour/hour), maybe more, maybe less, no strict things and especially no obligations! :). This is my first-ever post on Reddit, always have been a lurker, so I don't know exactly how this works but feel free to send me a message or react in the comments if you're interested or have any questions! Cheers, Maikel