NY Times Presentations

I hate giving presentations in class, mainly because I get really nervous in front of my classmates, even if I’m comfortable with talking to them outside of class. I’m always nervous when I have to speak in front of people so I tend to fidget with my hands or something to relieve some of that nervousness. I wasn’t too prepared for the presentation, such as reviewing what I wrote for my article, what my other groupmates wrote for their articles, and etc. I did have some eye contact, but not enough (because I was standing sideways). I also didn’t know how we were presenting the project, and the fact that our group was the first one to present made it a lot worse for me. Since this was my first project for the semester, I was even more nervous than usual, and I have to say that our group was disorganized in presenting our articles (such as walking across the front to present our individual articles). From this presentation I learned to be prepared next time I have to present a project, because I didn’t do very well in presenting my own article (I had a couple of pauses while presenting because I forgot what I was going to say). I will better prepared next time by maybe having an index card of important things to talk about so I won’t have sudden pauses during my presentation. From watching my other classmates present their projects, I gathered that they had confidence in what they were presenting, and as a result their presentations flowed really well. They knew their material, and they did a lot of research on their topic to be able to give a good presentation. I was surprised to see that one of the groups had an extremely long article, and I was very impressed by the amount of hard work they put into the project. From this experience I learned to be better prepared for a presentation and to be confident in what I’m talking about. Also, I learned to not fidget with my hands so much because it can be very distracting to the audience.