public speaking and presentations

I'm absolutely awful when it comes to public speaking I pretty much forget what I would be saying.
 
Hate them. I do okay at them even after all the freaking out I do, but I have always begged teachers to just give me failing grades instead of making me present to an audience.
 
Public speaking is one of my strengths, as long as it's not scripted. Because if the assignment isn't scripted, then I can basically wing the presentation.

My secret weapon when it comes to presentations is to butter up the audience/teacher. I tell a lot of jokes (oftentimes borrowed from The Simpsons...but very few people ever notice), do a lot of stupid stuff, and use a lot of big words that make me look smart. Then the teacher forgets most of what I say, remembers "Oh yeah, his presentation was funny and interesting," and gives me an A.
 
I'm getting better in presentations, but they are still not my strongest thing. We rarely have them, so I don't get many chances to practise presentations,
 
I did good at these, mostly because I knew a lot about my topic so I'd get good information. But I always hated presenting in front of people- I sweat a lot, my face gets all red, I talk slow and stutter a lot, etc. But I mean in regards to knowing my information I do good.
 
I'm pretty good at public speaking. My dad is my school's Speech teacher, so maybe it's genetic. I'm one of the few who is the strongest when I'm reading a speech, though. Most people tend to be unable to put a lot of feeling into something they're reading. I don't have that problem.
 
I never liked doing this. It was always something I had to just suck it up and get it over with. One time I had to freaking SING in front of class. ME. SING. Gahhhh. I still can't believe I did that. Granted it was in French, at least.

I've spoken before a large group of people a few times at my current job and I don't get quite as nervous as I would have in school. It's still somewhat uncomfortable though.
 
I'm actually good at public speaking. I dunno. I'm just never really afraid to talk in front of an audience. In fact, I just had to give a speech in English a week or two ago, and I did fine.
 
I'm actually good at it when I practice a lot before hand. To avoid being nervous I just let someone else go first and if I think I can do better I breeze through it.
 
I was always nervous about giving presentations and speeches, but in a school setting, I would get over it through the presentation.

One exception was 8th grade...had to give a presentation in Hebrew about one of the laws of the sabbath...winnowing. No one at home spoke the language, and all I had was a shitty dictionary. My mom asked my teacher to just let me fail, but he made me do it. He wasn't being mean, he just wanted me to see I could do it, and there was nothing to be scared of. I cried the entire time, but looked around to my 11 other classmates, and they were all encouraging me. No one was a jerk about it, I had nothing to be afraid of the entire time. No one cared that I was stumbling over farm terms in modern and ancient Hebrew.
 
I'm really comfortable with public speaking but whenever I have to hold a piece of paper or something up to the audience, my hands shake. my last semester of college it happened (to my surprise because I thought I was over it) but I was at least able to control it somewhat. I remember in my 7th grade science class, I had to present something and I actually apologized to the class, "sorry I really don't know why my hands are shaking" trying to play it off as a joke which was kind of relieving to admit that I was aware of it, but still awkward.
 
My mind is absent whenever I speak in front of a large audience. I've never liked people in general, so I don't think too greatly of public speeches and presentations.
 
the worst experience was 10th grade English class, where we had to write an 8-10 page paper about Human Right Violations.

What no one told me until I was in that class was we also had to do an 8-10 minute presentation on the topic we chose. Before that, a usual presentation would be like 2-3 minutes, if that. So that was... fun.
 
Presentations are bullshit. What's even the point of them? Fair enough if you're presenting something that's actually important or related to the real world of business, but is it really necessary in school/college when you're doing piddly little investigations that no one cares about? Fuck right off...
 
Yeah, fuck that shit. It's not even so much that I'm bad at it. I just don't like doing it.
 
The best presentation I remembered having was one on my Junior year of High school, which was basically a final test for this social studies class. I'm absolutely dreadful at public speaking, but somehow that presentation went pretty well. I wrote an entire speaking script for it, but somehow that was one of the only few times I managed to memorize most of my speech, and I didn't prepare much for it until the late night before.

My worst public speaking experience was a presentation I had to do for a film analysis class in college. I wrote a script but messed up the order of the pages, and couldn't get them in order before the time limit (there was a time limit for each person). The fact that I completely wrote on the wrong topic didn't help much. Compared to my other presentations, that whole thing was my equivalent of the Hindenberg crashing atop of the Titanic.
 
i remember having to present for chemistry about two elements off the periodic table, and even though i did the assignment and read it to the class and all that, i had almost zero idea what i was talking about the entire time. this also happened in 10th grade.

god, 10th grade year was NOT a good year for me.
 
eh it is a good exercise though

Yeah, to some degree, but there are times when it really isn't necessary to the overall work being done. Even now when we're asked to present something (And this is one of the beauties of being at College rather than School where they're stricter on language) you'll hear a good chunk of the class going "Oh, for fuck's sake!"
 
Yeah I get really uncomfortable doing presentations. Not in a way where I'm unable to do them, but just in an awkward; 'Don't know how to say things' kind of way. I'll have what I want to say all prepared and then when it comes to presenting it in front of an audience I tend to stutter, slur my words and talk really quickly. I'm not exactly a people person though and it often takes me a while to grow comfortable around people or even just one person. I'll get through them, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't dread the experience.
 
I have trouble talking when I'm with a group of friends and there's more than 4 of them

This is a bit off topic but don't you hate it when your friends are talking about something that you're not familiar with? Like when my friends start talking about Clash of Clans (a mobile game that I don't play) and I am completely lost listening to their "raids" and "gold" and whatever. It really blows.
 
I hate public speaking and presentations. But I can see why they might make you do them in school, even if they are terrifying for some people (including myself). What I hate is how they are graded. If you look at the criteria on which you are graded on presentations in school, it doesn't usually have very much to do with the matieral itself, but rather how well the presentation was given. It's bullshit. They basically penalize people for being introverts or generally nervous in front of crowds. An example was in one of my high school chemistry classes... I lost marks for my presentation even though the material was good. In a chemistry class. What the hell do presentation skills have to do with chemistry?
 
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