My Presentation Experience
Starting my fall semester as usual I am taking a speech course with professor Sinkoff who I have taken her class before. I am retaking this class for the third time (something which I am not ashamed) and I have made such an improvement from when I last took it 2 years ago. From the way I would make my PowerPoints and the way I spoke. I was scared to retake this class seeing as I used to be TERRIFIED of public speaking, but I took what I learned through the years to prepare for my 1st presentation of the fall semester.
What makes the presentations a little easier is having our professor tells us what we are presenting and then we are in charge to determine how to make our PowerPoint. Our 1st presentation was a chapter presentation where the professor would assign us a group and based on that group it determined the chapter we would present. Our group was chapter 3 which was about Intercultural communication. And what intercultural communication is the interactions that happen between two people of different cultures. So, what our group was supposed to do was put together a PowerPoint to essentially teach the other students in our class the different aspects of intercultural communication as well as the factors that pertain to the subject. Everyone in my group was a little worried at first since we didn’t know what to expect and what to measure up to.
When our group was assigned, and we knew our chapter we broke into our groups to have a quick meeting to discuss who did what. The way we determined this was by going online to the book and seeing by how many sections it was divided as well as the name of the sections. When we figured that out each of us picked out the categories, we each were interested in presenting. I choice to introduce and start the presentation. Mind you I am going into this presentation with my past experience of my fear of public speaking so my thought process was if I went first and got over with it would be like ripping of the band-aid. After having decided that I went ahead to reading my sections and getting familiar with the content. Not only did I read the chapter, but I also did research on some of the highlighted words to get more modern examples that the class could make easier connections. While reading my section and researching online I took the liberty of writing notes on the side of detailed information I would share. So, I decided to make my slides very to the point, less words, and more pictures. In reality no one reads the sentences or paragraphs anyways. And because of that all 3 of my slides included a definition or two while I spoke from my notes that had more in-depth examples and history on intercultural communication. Choosing the visuals wasn’t as tricky but me being a bit of a perfectionist I wanted to choose pictures everyone would recognize and understand. To be quite honest making my notes and organizing them took more time than putting together my slides. It took me about 15 minutes to do my slides and about an hour for my notes.
So, after our slides were all put together it was smooth sailing from there. Of course, the day of the presentation I was super nervous, I literally thought I would space out and forget everything. In that moment I was like “why did I choose to be the first one?” But lucky I did not forget the material and I was glad I had made the decision to go first, and it was a breeze. In my opinion my part of the presentation was solid and how I spoke was very good as well. Throughout the time I was speaking my professor would interact through the chat we have on the side and from the looks of it she enjoyed my presentations. She even gave us a fun fact regarding her family that correlated to the examples I gave. After I presented, I went to our group chat on WhatsApp to ask my fellow team mates how I did. And to my surprise my classmates had already made really good comments amongst themselves about how I did. And honestly that made me feel so calm and my nerves went away because I knew that I grew out if my fear of public speaking.
Now with all, I can say that this 1st presentation set the bar for the rest of the semester and my teammates. I can’t wait for what is to come. This presentation is one I won’t forget which sounds silly to most. But to me it made me realize how much I have grown in the last two years that I had taken the class and it shows me I just needed to believe in myself and that everything is possible. This presentation also taught me that being ready really makes a difference especially in a group project. And I was lucky enough to have a great group that did their work, asked questions, and answered some of my own. When I first took this class, I was about 16 years old and was absolutely horrible even I understood why I failed. I was always a nervous wreck and then I took it 2 years later and it wasn’t bad, but I could’ve done a lot better. And now here I am 2 years after that with a whole new mindset and a whole lot of growth and it took this presentation for me to realize that.
Wow ! what an interesting story. I don't know who wrote this. Please send me an e-mail and say you are in the 8:00 class and were the 3rd person on Ajai's blog.
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