Presentations

For all those of you who know me pretty well, you'll probably have realized by now that I hate standing up in front of a crowd and saying stuff...Oral presentations just freak me out...they make me feel vulnerable and I feel like I'm just waiting to be picked on...I go all wobbly and my voice and legs start quivering. I don't think that makes for a very nice sight for the audience in question, but anyways...it is a part of some of my uni assessments, and I've found that even when it is optional for me, I choose to put myself through the torture of speaking in public...

Anyhoos, point being, I just got back from uni after giving an oral presentation on my final year engineering project today. And you know what...I actually enjoyed it!! Ok, maybe enjoyed is a bit of a strong word, but I wasn't as paranoid about everything as I usually tend to be at times like these...I have done presentations in the past, but this one was huge!!! I mean...it WAS like only my FINAL YEAR PRESENTATION!!! It started off a bit weirdly though...My USB refused to work on the bloody computer (which also had a broken A: drive...like seriously people, we are supposed to be in the bloody technology sector...The business school has better computers than us in fookin' engineering!!!). One of our judges was nice enough to tell me that if I didn't feel comfortable with the outdated slides, he would wait a bit longer till we got it sorted out though...I troubled quite a few souls today, and all I can say is that I'm really grateful to all those people. I think that incident kind of got my adrenalin pumping furiously though, coz when I started my talk, I was as cool as ice...

Ok, you know what...maybe not as cool!! I stumbled over my words a few times (actually, twice!)...but besides that I was able to maintain eye contact with my audience, my words were not really rushed, and personally I think I did quite alright. I didn't have to resort to drastic measures such as imagining that the audience was naked (which PJ swears works!!), and thank goodness for that, coz honestly, I think it would be a bit disturbing to think of all my lecturers (who PJ again swears have all passed their 100th birthday) without their clothes on.

I think I did good today, and I'm proud of myself for that...Question time didn't go as smoothly coz its always a challenge to answer a question if the question didn't make sense/was unclear to you...but anyways...this is done and over with...I feel relieved as far as I'm concerned...life is good...for the moment at least...