Reflections on Oral Presentation

I must say this was a real journey, one of sweat, joy and frustrations that lasted for almost 6 weeks and we pulled through. It was a very interesting journey these 6 weeks and especially so this past week when we started to prepare for the final presentation. Nonetheless, the whole experience will leave me with many fond memories for years to come.

Preparation

Personally, I feel that we put in more effort on writing the proposal than for the oral presentation itself. It was difficult to meet up at times because of the different schedules that we all had. The 3 of us are very passionate about this proposal, thus, we had a clear idea of the things that we were going to be saying on the actual presentation itself. We managed to have a practise session together on the night prior to the actual presentation. Before we knew it, D-Day arrived. On my bus ride to school, I was actually running through my presentation in my head, from the slides to the way that I was going to execute the delivery. I tried to picture the faces of the audience so that I was mentally prepared for the big one. I must say that this actually helped to ease off some of the pressure that I put upon myself. Before the presentation itself, Rami, Megha and I were still joking about things to help ease out the pressure upon ourselves (Thanks guys).

Delivery

For delivery, I felt that I projected my voice well and also established eye contact throughout the presentation. I tried to use some hand gestures during the presentation itself. However, I feel that I did not use hand gestures as effectively as I hoped to. During the peer teaching exercise, I did not use much emphasis on words that I should have emphasised on and I tried to do so for this presentation, to make it more impactful. Looking back, I feel that I could have used more emphasis though.

Slides

We opted for the use of PowerPoint because we wanted to make it look simple and be the main focus of the presentation. We also minimised the words on each of our slides. I personally learned from my peer teaching experience that having to many words on slides can actually stray the audience to some extent because they would concentrate more on the slides. We also added more pictures to our slides- pictures that supported the idea that we were trying to propose.  

In conclusion, I realised that I missed out 1 or 2 sentences that would have made the presentation look more seamless. As they rightly say, there are always 3 presentations, the one you prepared for, the one you gave and the one you wished you gave. Overall, I really enjoyed the entire experience, from writing the proposal to doing the oral presentation. It has been a learning journey and I definitely and more aware of the way I present myself as compared to the start of the term.

Lifes' experiences (Editted 9/10)

In one of many working stints in a broadcast firm, I had the pleasure of meeting a Japanese person, called Shimpei. Having studied in Singapore schools all of my life; it was very uncommon for me to meet and get to know Japanese people. Shimpei is a very quiet and reserved man and you hardly hear him raise his voice even when he is angry. This was extremely puzzling because in most parts of the world people tend to use vulgarities or at least raise their voice when they get angry. Hence, I found this really strange but I found out that it was part of their culture.

For one of the projects at work, which was a live broadcast of a local football game, I was assigned to work with Shimpei. I was excited and also anxious at the same time about working with Shimpei. I had heard that it was quite difficult to understand the way he did things. However, I felt that this was a good learning lesson for me. After all the initial discussions, I was to meet with Shimpei on the morning of 14 May at one of the local stadiums to discuss the positions of the cameras and the need for scaffolds for the broadcast of the game there.  It was a morning that I would not forget any time soon. It was raining heavily that morning and due to poor visibility, there was a vehicle breakdown on the Pan Island Expressway. The vehicles were slowly inching forward but as time passed by, it seemed as if the bus I was on had hardly covered any more distance. I was getting panicky as even though there were still 30 minutes before I was to meet Shimpei, I had this bad feeling that I was going to be late. I tried calling Shimpei on his mobile but to no avail. Hence, I decided to jus drop Shimpei a SMS to inform him that I may be reaching late because of the torrential downpour. Traffic was still moving really slowly, annoying almost everybody on the bus, which was also evident from the motorists, some of whom were perpetually blaring their horns. Finally, I reached my destination and hurriedly got off the bus. By now, I was about 10 minutes late. I rushed to the stadium only to find that Shimpei was not there yet and I was quite relieved. After running to the stadium, I decided to take a seat and wait for Shimpei. Minutes were passing by and there was still no sign of Shimpei. Finally after waiting for 15 minutes, I decided to call him and ask him where he was. This time, he picked up his phone and in a rather agitated tone, he told me that he had left the stadium because he thought I was not coming. I told him that I tried calling him and even messaged him about the situation that I was in but he was having none of it. After hanging up the phone, I was quite puzzled and perturbed by his behaviour as I had messaged him that I was going to be late and that it was raining really heavily. I made my way back to the office and told some of the staff what had happened at the stadium. It was then that I learned that Japanese people are extremely particular about punctuality and having them to wait for you is a cardinal sin in their culture. I apologised to Shimpei after the incident and it was back to work as usual after that incident.

 I had never known about this cultural norm as the culture in Singapore is a lot different. In Singapore, the other party usually waits for you and buying lunch or drinks always help alleviate the problem.From this experience alone, I realised that the Japanese have a very different culture compared to many of the other counties in our region. I learned more about the Japanese culture from this and also one of the important life lessons was that if you have a scheduled appointment, do not be late and try to leave a lot earlier then necessary. I could not have foreseen the weather on that day but I certainly could have left my home earlier and planned ahead for the unexpected change in weather.