Being one of the first two groups to present, my group members and I were full of anticipation and wondering how it would turn out for all of us. The location was not our usual classroom where we had our lessons in. Instead, we would be presenting in an environment where all of us were not familiar with and at the same time, we had to sell our ideas to the audience which were our classmates. "Can we connect with them?" "Will we be able to sell our ideas?" All these questions ran through our minds.
We started our presentation. Being the third speaker of my group, the pressure to do well was huge as both of my team members did well for their parts. When it was my turn to present, I was simply overwhelmed with nervousness. Halfway through, I could not remember what I had to say and my mind just went blank. I was in shocked because this had never happened to me in a presentation before. It was a first for me. I knew at that point in time, my momentum was gone and I could not grab the attention of my audience anymore. After what seemed like a long pause, my group members passed me my script. From thereon, I tried to regain my composure and continued where I left off. The rest went off without a hitch. However, I felt really apologetic for not performing well on my part and letting my group mates down. They did great and presented their background and ideas with clarity.
I was disappointed in my performance and I had definitely learnt a lesson from this presentation. I realized the most fatal mistake I had done was to memorize my script. The moment I forgot what was my next sentence, I could not continued at all. The next time I had to do a presentation, I will only memorize a few important points and elaborate from there. In this way, I am able to understand the context more and deliver my points across more confidently and with less mistakes. I am thankful for the feedback I had received as this shows that I can improve myself so much more and be a better presenter that I am now.
