My heart was racing, my hands trembled, my knees were shaking and my stomach grumbled.
How could I possibly get ready to present in 30 minutes with all this nervous energy running through my veins?
I don't know exactly what was causing the nervousness in me, I knew my topic deeply and I had created and practiced the presentation. Honestly, it was just the fear of talking to a BIG audience that scared me. As I walked to the stage to present, my heart moved faster and faster. In any minute it was going to pop out. I had my notes in my hands just because I needed a little more confidence, it was more of a psychological thing. I knew exactly what I had to say. I knew my topics and struggles because I experienced it. I will not lie, our topic is extremely challenging and I have to admit that I didn't have a complete dominance over every aspect of it. However, considering our time constrains, I was proud of everything I managed to understand.
Many people think that presenting in pair is much easier, but it made me even more scared. I was afraid to mess up and confuse Gisella, I was scared to mess up the changing of slides for her and I was scared that I might start rushing. Anyhow I was starting so I had to keep my nerves down and confidence up. I begun the presentation by telling the story of Muhammed Yunus, after I finished saying my part and it shifted towards Gisella I felt a huge relief. Without using the papers I was able to manage presenting and I was changing the slides at the right time, therefore, I had nothing to worry. My nerves begun to die.
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As the presentation progressed my tone shifted from scared to excited and all the knowledge begun to flow naturally out of me. Why? Because I had lived every single moment, struggle and interview of this project. Additionally what allowed us to have a good delivery and power over our topic was the fact that our slides were EXTREMELY organized. The images were purposeful and the ideas of every slide builded up. Having the stories in one slide and then the learning out come on another allowed us to have a balance between anecdotes and reflections throughout.
After I said the last powerful line to conclude our presentation my body could finally breathe. I did it! The pride and satisfaction I felt after sharing such bumpy journey and interesting topic with the audience was incomparable. We managed to synthesize such complicated topic into 30 minutes. BEAUTIFUL WORK.
Even though I was happy with our presentation there some things that I would do differently. I need to learn how to breathe and relax before a presentation, when the presenter is not confidence it goes through the voice. As I was nervous my pacing in the beginning was TERRIBLE. I was speaking too fast and probably the audience were confused or weren't able to fully grasp everything I was saying. Additionally something that contributed to my fast speaking was the fact that I had too much energy due to the coffee I had drank in the morning. Also because I was so stressed thinking of everything that could go wrong instead on focusing completely on what I had to say I was repeating some stuff. Finally if I would of fully concentrated and spoken slower I would of probably have shared more things with my audience in a concise way.
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