Just this
past week I had a presentation for one class which is mostly case-based and in
which presentations are worth more than the exams in terms of the grade. I had
a lot of work into it together with my group to write the paper we were going
to present on and then we also put a lot of effort into making sure then
presentation would go smoothly. The morning of the presentation I woke up
feeling unwell and yet I was not worried because I thought I had prepared well and
by this time with the experience gained over the years I had overcome my fears
of speaking before others. However as I approached the end of my segment, I
phased out for a moment and forgot the last two points I was going to make. I
took a moment to try to remember and could not even though had I just looked at
one of the screens in front of me, these points were highlighted in that slide.
I just had a moment of total black out and passed it over to the next person in
the group. Although I was told the class barely noticed, I couldn’t help but
blame myself for not having rehearsed enough and affecting our group’s overall
performance. I learned that there is no substitute for practice and despite
sickness sometimes you just need to pull it together and put forward the best
you can.
Hi Lirim, I am actually in a class very similar to this in which you present a case to the class that has been worked on during a period of time. I do understand the frustration that you felt when you have been practicing and doing everything possible to make sure you got the presentation right. However, sometimes things do not always go as planned. It is a great thing that the class barely noticed the error though! Here is a link to my blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://breyflynch.blogspot.com/2016/04/celebrating-failure.html
I think everybody has a case of stage fright to some degree and I really feel sympathy for you. I always tend to speak really fast when presenting in front of a class and I try to tell myself relax but it never works. It sounds like you learned from it and hopefully you can grow from it, great job.
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