Evaluating the Oral Presentation

           Speaking in public has never been my forte. In fact, it has always been my nemesis. Despite having gone through numerous oral presentations from secondary school to university, I still cringe at the idea of presenting before a group of people. Being afraid of making mistakes in my speech, I rely greatly on scripts every time I present. Holding a script often gives me a sense of security, which I sometimes fall back on (by reading off it word-for-word) when I lose my train of thoughts during a presentation. This, of course, is not ideal.

For the final presentation of this module, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and use a different approach. Plus, selling an idea together with my teammates, Mikaela, Hannah and Kelley was far from delivering a content-heavy and strictly academic presentation which I have been accustomed to in school. Inspired by Steve Jobs’ amazing stage presence through watching various videos on Youtube, I was determined to not hold on to any script and try to engage the audience as much as I could. In preparation for my part of the presentation, I typed out a script (just can’t do without one) to memorise and tried to make my slides as clutter-free as possible. Following which, I practiced as much as I could on my own and with my fellow teammates to ensure a smooth delivery and to cut down on the ‘uhms’ and ‘ahs’ that I am prone to lapse into.  

During the actual presentation, I was feeling rather confident and knew the content like back of my hand. However, as I was too ambitious, the amount of animation I had added to my slides resulted in a great sense of insecurity. As a result, I was referring too much to the screen behind me, unknowingly (which Brad pointed out at the end of the presentation). This was also partly due to the limited amount of practices I had to perfectly synch my speech with the chronological appearances of pictures and diagrams on the screen. Nevertheless, I thought it was a good learning experience and the feedbacks that I have received were very much needed for my improvement in future oral presentations. I was also proud of myself for being able to present without constantly referring to a script! NOTHING Is IMPOSSIBLE. All we need is courage, to trust ourselves, and some hard work :).