September 8th - blah blah blah

Tonight we gave a short presentation on the things that have impacted our lives and made us who we are. I struggled a lot with this presentation, and I'm not really sure why. I spent about 20 hours going through my past, drawing out graphs of high and low points, and trying to come up with an effective analogy or story that I could use to connect to my audience with. I also know, from past experience that practicing and working through your presentation several times before you give the final version is really important. That is something I just ran out of time for on this assignment. Because I struggled and spent so much time on the formation of the information, I didn't really have time to get my talk condensed down to a few simple topics, and I didn't have time to get it done ahead of time so I could practice. The Ropes course really took a bunch of time away this week, but highlights that I need to get get more done, earlier. I do start on Thursday's after class however, I need to get more accomplished.

I think part of my struggle comes from trying to overall analyze the task. The purpose of the presentation was to give us an opportunity to conceptualize and then communicate important topics. However, for me, this required a lot of thinking and remembering from the past; and probably most of all, it required me to take my verbose approach to everything and get it down to a short, concise, and simple presentation.

Another part of my struggle comes from a desire to really do a complete analysis on whatever I've been assigned. I want so much to do a good, complete, and impactful job that I get lost in the details. I need to take a step back from the assignment and attempt to understand the purpose, the audience, and ascertain the level of work that is needed. I know this struggle comes from a work and teaching history that is very detail oriented and work environments where this is reinforced through various means. I know to grow however, I need to be able to take complex data and see the big picture quickly and accurately, and then have an ability to provide a distilled and clearly focused presentation of that information.

My presentation of self was really below my typical standards. I was nervous (I'm not sure why but my hopes of doing well, knowing what I'm capable of, and being unprepared probably where the big reasons), my presentation had no clear focus, my opening story was disjointed and not clear, and my discussion points were rambling and not connected, and I didn't have good visuals. I didn't choose a Chronological order method (though I should have probably), which enhanced the difficulty as well. I hope I didn't get a really poor grade, however if I were the professor, I would have given myself an average grade, no more. It was categorically, unexciting and blah (..., blah, blah). I felt quite defeated over the whole thing to be honest, but I will do INCREDIBLY better next time. I will not let a failed 5 minute presentation keep me down.