Reflection On Oral Presentation

“And let me just cover one more slide before I let you go” Beamed the professor. 

Quickly I glance over at the digital wall clock mounted just above where I was seated. “ 11.50”, it read.  One more slide? Doesn’t she know I have the biggest presentation of my academic semester to deliver? Perhaps I should sneak out, because if I knew what her “ one more slide” meant it would mean being really late. Quickly I glanced back to plan out my escape route, but I saw that it was no good , I  was seated too near the front and I would cause too much of a disturbance. Resigning to my fate, I sat down on my seat and waited until she released us.

Needless to say I was flustered and only arrived in class at 12.15 PM. Despite the initial rattle , the familiar faces of my classmates calmed my nerves down.  Upon seeing the excellent performance of the earlier group, I had a glimpse on how a good presentation should be like. I took note of their inflection and tone and made a concerted effort to emulate their good points.

*Flashback*

Due to our conflicting time schedule we had only managed to squeeze in one rehearsal prior to the actual presentation. However we made sure we covered good ground during the short time we had.  We collated our slides and mutually agreed upon the fonts and background. Due to the lack of time we had to practise our parts on our own. During the preparation phase I was contemplating on whether I should bring up cue cards to jolt my memory in the event that I forget. Hearing horror stories on presenters freezing up after forgetting their lines from Ka Yan most certainly didn't help. But at the same time I didn't want my cue cards to become a crutch. The thing about bringing up notes, is that there will always be the temptation to refer to them.

In the end I decided to ditch the cue cards, I convinced myself that I could always use the PowerPoint slides as a giant cue card, should the need to refer arise.

I decided to employ the "Story telling" presentation style with the intention to change mindsets on childbirth. Given the fact that the targeted audience would be mainly the school cohort; with the Provost included of course, i felt like the presentation need not be too stiff . Slides were chosen to be minimal with as few words as possible, with pictures to guide my presentation.  Initially, I was a little worried because being in engineering ,most of my presentations are centered about mathematics and science, and I had never done anything like that before.  

To pull it off, I had to craft a decent script and that took me longer than I had expected. But that wasn't even the hard part, I had to memorise the whole script!  The problem with memorizing scripts is that we tend to be robotic and regurgitate whatever we know, but it doesn't have to be the case if we remember to input our emotions , vary our tone and inflections. Often the audience won't remember what you say but they will always remember how you say it.

12.50 and it was our turn to present. Being the first speaker i felt the burden to set the mood of the whole presentation.  Thankfully things went without a hitch,(except for the glitchy handheld scroll-er that wouldn't seem to respond at times.) well until the middle of my presentation when I actually blanked out. Quickly I glanced at the screen for inspiration and thankfully it came and I was able to finish my part. 

Looking back, ample preparation was integral in carrying out a successful presentation, the many dry runs i conducted with myself gave me the confidence to present . However  there were a few things I could have improved upon. Firstly ,I could have spoken a little slower to let the message sink in with the audience, instead of rattling on and on. Secondly I could have adopted a better posture because I felt that I was slouching(after reviewing the video on IVLE).

In sum , I felt like our team had done well except for the fact that most of us were a little jumpy that day. Perhaps we let our nerves get the better of us sometimes.

Let me end off with a clip from an old movie. In this video we see the protagonist Chaplin giving a speech , if you notice really hard you can see him reading off a screen, but it doesn't matter because the way he delivers his message is really inspiring. Do watch it if you have the time.

Cheers!