The thing about oral presentations is that they are generally horrible experiences for me. In the past, I’ve done them and gotten good marks, so you’d think I would have nothing to worry about. Well you’d be wrong. I always worry before each presentation. In school and university it was always so scary to go present my topic after someone else had done such a great job. I’d be thinking, “wow, he made ancient farm tools really interesting…and now I have to go drown on about whatever my topic is….what is my topic? Oh yeah, that one…right…let’s go do this and see what happens this time.”
And then I go up there and figure I’m droning on and on…and then it’s only been 30 seconds.
That’s right I still have 14 minutes and 50 seconds to go…
It gets even worse when I have to record oral presentations. Sure I get as many takes as I need to get it right, but I have to sit there and listen to myself and think “I sound like that in real life? That can’t be right!”
The best part of an oral presentation is the end, and fortunately there’s always an end.