When I was told about the presentation, I made a mental sigh. It was not something I was expecting or looking forward to, simply because I had always been fearful about presenting. Up until my presentation day, I was overcome by a paralyzing fear about my presentation and was even thinking of bailing on that day. In order to overcome my fear, I kept repeating mentally what Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain." This quote in addition to the tips Brad shared during class helped me to face the presentation head on and thankfully I did quite well.
I felt that this was an extremely enlightening and encouraging learning opportunity for me. My lack of confidence in presenting has always made me revert to default ways of presenting, which is using notecards and avoiding eye contact. However, the opportunity for us to present and learn from our peers have made me realize the importance of presentation. It also dawned on me that presentation skills are actually learnable. I took away some really important insights on presentation such as the usage of stories, proper eye contact, knowing the content well and speaking from the heart not the mind. I feel that Brad gave us a safe space in which we could hone our skills in presenting and would definitely encourage him to continue this in his next year's class. However, I feel that it would have been encouraging to have the presentation graded so that the effort and time spent on preparing for the presentation is well worth it. Regardless of the grades, I still felt that this learning opportunity was worthwhile for me and would like to extend my thanks to Brad for incorporating this segment into our learning.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for your detailed feedback and for your recommendation. I'm glad you found the exercise useful.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you suggest the presentation to be graded. Wouldn't that take away from the "safety" students might feel when presenting?