Hello my dear readers! Before I get into the actual reflection, I hope you guys have been well rested and used your holiday fruitfully :D Now back to the reflection proper.
My GT experience itself was amazing- I had incredible group members (you guys know who you are!) who knew what to do during meetings, and we quickly had a clear idea of what we were going to do during the actual presentation.
I must say that I didn't expect to do that well during the actual presentation. From my experience, I am just an average presenter. There are many other people out there who can articulate their thoughts better than me, and have way better pronunciation than me. For some reason, this presentation came naturally to me and I didn't have much trouble with it. I suppose I could say that this was because I didn't use a script or cue cards, and hence the the presentation became much more 'natural'. I'm not exactly sure that this is the main reason though, I'll have to wait till the next presentation to find out.
Still, my group and I were very well prepared for the presentation, having met several times before to try to perfect our deliveries. During the actual presentation itself, I didn't feel any nervousness at all, which surprised me a little. Perhaps my teaching stint at AJC helped somewhat? Still, I hope to be able to continue with this level of confidence for my future presentations. My other group members did very well too, and I am very happy and impressed with our level of performance on that day.
Moving on to my part of the presentation, I must say that I am lucky that my part was short- I had no trouble deciding on my content for the presentation. I tried to act naturally throughout- without paying much attention to my hand gestures, which came off pretty okay. However, during the presentation itself, I had the feeling that I slowed down too much at the start (for audience interaction I think) that I sped up the last part of the presentation. Not very good. My aim for the next presentation is to have good pace control to project an image of calmness. Another thing that I felt I could improve on was my pronunciation (especially when talking faster).
In terms of slides, we tried to go for a minimalist slide design. Still, I felt that the other teams after us had slides which looked so nice, and I hope to be able to do that for the next presentation, while still using a minimalist slide design.
In conclusion, I am very happy with the results of the first GT, and I wish everyone the best for the upcoming presentations in the future!
Thank you, Bryan, for the detailed reflection. I like the way you provide a review of your experience from various angles. If indeed it is true that 'we don't learn from experience but from reflecting on that experience,' then you have learned a great deal in this exercise. I can say that you took your effort up a notch for the FOP as well. Much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteI think you GT presentation was very good. Just the part that you required the audiences to read through the very wordy slide can be improve which you had mentioned it in your post. Other than that everything is GOOD.
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