Being thrown in a pool can sometimes be the magical cure for a deathly fear of water; riding an enormous rollercoaster or climbing a ladder can help those who are anxious about heights. But for Tufts senior Michael Taub, it neither a pool nor a ladder - but a stage - that eased him into speaking publicly despite his stuttering.
While growing up on Long Island, Taub, along with an estimated three million Americans, suffered from stuttering, which impairs a person's ability to produce a normal flow of speech. The disorder creates frequent repetitions during speech, thereby hindering the speaker's ability to begin certain words.
But while the tendency to stutter might create an aversion to public speaking for most, Taub went from backstage to front and center in his middle school and high school productions in order to help overcome his speech disorder.
"I think that's partially why I started, kind of as a way to make myself speak some more," Taub said. "I'd also heard that there were people who stuttered who encouraged doing public speaking, so I figured that it would kind of be a cool thing to try."
Taub, who had been going to speech therapy, used the high school acting stage as means to practice the specific speech techniques he'd learned.
"It's not as if it cured stuttering," he said. "But it definitely helped me practice things I learned through therapy. It was just a lot of fun also."
Stuttering affects a much larger ratio of boys than girls, and can be cured if speech therapy intervention occurs at a very young age.
"It's kind of a strange thing because it's mostly guys who stutter," Taub said. "For most cases, the guy will eventually grow out of it, but for some cases, it just kind of becomes a thing."
Taub believes that stuttering will always be a part of his life.
"I will always stutter to some extent," he said. "But there are a couple of therapy programs and ways to learn how to manage your stuttering so that it doesn't become a constant, severe thing."
When Taub came to Tufts, he decided that he wanted to continue his involvement in theater programs. Becoming an active member of 3P's his freshman year, the senior has acted in multiple shows, including "A Midsummer's Nights' Dream," "Control Freaks," "Peter Pan" and the musical "Parade."
And while his experience with acting has helped his speaking, Taub is optimistic about how his speaking has potentially affected his acting.
"What I try to do is maintain some kind of a positive attitude about it," he said. "There are sometimes when I think, 'Oh, if I had not stuttered on that line, I probably would have gotten the part' - but I have no idea."
Last year, Taub teamed up with two members of the class of 2007 to create a documentary that would combine his interest for entertainment and his desire to reach out to fellow stutterers. The trio, comprised of Taub and class of 2007 alumni Tim Huang and Stefanie Tiso, created a film about the lives of people who stutter for the Ex College class, "Producing Films for Social Change."
The senior said that he ventured into the class as a way of reaching out to those who had shared his experiences with stuttering.
"I was kind of interested in trying out filmmaking as a hobby. I had just never gotten the chance to," he said. "But it was mostly to create a project about something that I felt passionately about."
In addition to showcasing his work to the Tufts community, Taub also had the opportunity to share the film with his speech therapy group, which had been featured in the film and had provided inspiration.
"I showed it to them and they all had really good reactions," he said. "They all told me that they felt really good watching something that kind of told the story about what they are so familiar with. It was really nice to get feedback from people who were so involved in inspiring me to do the project."
The trio was also able to show the film to the Medford community when they entered the documentary in the Medford Film Festival.
Taub's experience making a film has inspired him to take his work with stuttering outside of the realm of academia after graduating. Currently enrolled in an introductory speech pathology course at Boston University, the senior hopes to continue working with people who stutter.
"It has nothing to do with my major at all, but I think after making the film about stuttering, I was kind of really passionate about that," he said. "It's a possibility, I think, for me to go into that."
