How to College: Delivering Presentations

It's said that many people consider the stage to be the most frightening thing ever; I know what it feels like, but it all gets better after you get over the fear and the laziness and start training for real.

So, the first and most important step in organizing a good college presentation is: start doing it in advance. A week, at least. I've lost entire weekends preparing presentations I've procrastinated, and it's an AWFUL experience. It may be individual or in group, but it always leads to the same amount of stress. You may get a grade-worth work done, but I never recommend that. When you do this, you lose so much time stressing yourself because of something you could have already worked on. As I said in the other posts, it's never worth sacrificing your health, free time and capacity working like this.

Second step: learn how to leave your ego at home. That's the one thing that used to scare me the most, and make me procrastinate. Take 3 minutes of offline and alone time and ask yourself two things: "why are you nervous" and "who's intimidating you". Rationalize these fears you may not even know that are there; if it's the teacher that's making you afraid of it, remember that there'll be nothing to worry about if you make a good job. If it's your class colleagues, remember that, first of all, they'll most probably not even pay attention. If in your case they're actually going to listen to you, go back to the teacher's case.


Third step: organize your presentation bit by bit. Focusing on only one step at a time makes everything easier. I talked about it in the previous post as well. So, my guide to doing presentations is usually like this:
1. open the .ppt doc.
2. do your research.
3. study/read about the theme to understand it properly
4. organize the main topics to be covered.
5. write a "script" for the delivering of the presentation - a simple list containing the order of the topics to be covered.
6. finally, organize anything else you need (leaflets, for example) and it's done!

Last step: REHEARSE. I do it at least twice before the big day. So, even if I get really nervous right before, I know how to start it, and this reduces my stress considerably - specially if I bring my script.

Also important to note:

- do not worry about saying out loud every single letter of your script, because it's impossible. It's awful to watch a presentation in which the person only reads, and harsh teachers may lower your grade for this. The rehearsal is to make you more familiar with the topic, therefore you'll be more comfortable in talking about it.

- try and do something that calms you down before it starts. I dunno, you can eat or drink something you like (though I wouldn't recommend fast food and sodas, you don't want to feel the urge to go to the bathroom during the damn thing), meditate, read a page or two of a book... I usually do a simple breathing exercise - breath in and out very slowly, through the nose, 20-30 times. It helps to keep my mind off things so the anxiety level drops a bit.

After you get used to being on the spotlight, it can even become something fun! At least for me it is - I'd rather present a work of mine than doing tests. While in a written evaluation you usually must know in advance what the teacher wants you to answer (a serious problem I have with the college education system...), I can be myself and develop my own thoughts in a presentation. Well, at least most times. And, to me, the effort in making a project in which you are the one in control is very self-rewarding.

For next time, a guide-ish on how to do a good test!