Ugh

[mosaic]

i STINK at giving presentations. for having been on stage when i was younger (i was originally a theater major in college) i am amazed at how poorly i do when it's just me on stage and not a character i'm playing.

i've tried to pretend... to say i'm a character when doing presentations but it never works... it's just me up there and i get so nervous... then i see the other students presenting and they have it all memorized, or they know it so well they can wing it and i mentally freeze and even what i do know well i struggle to get out.

i'll probably only get 20 out of 25 on the presentation i did last night. it makes me more sure that i am not going in to teaching

[nats]

the main thing is you did it and you got through. where i work a lot of terrible presenters still teach (we all have to teach a %) and it's ok. we have no problems presenting, but really CANNOT talk unscripted about our work. we get nervous and go blank. it's mortifying, but we're slowly slowly getting a bit better and the same is likely to happen for you. practice eventually trumps nerves!

[Five of Hearts]

Hi mosaic

sounds like you passed, and a pass is a pass in anyone's books, so well done.

I happen to be a little bit of a presentation star, and nats is exactly right. practice makes perfect.

i dropped out and got a job at 16 that was basically nothing but presentation all day long.

my technique was to know my subject inside out and freestyle, could never do the memorized thing.

good luck with the next one.

5oH

[The People]

Mosaic, your fear of failure has followed you through school since you went back there. Is it mixed in with fear of success?

Have you ever tried acupuncture? I have done it and when I used it when an exam or paper was due it really helped with the anxiety.

Perhaps you could imagine that the people who are listening are the MM people. We don't judge.

[Five of Hearts]

I wish I had even a tenth of your wisdom people

[mosaic]

people, i have never heard of acupuncture helping like that. hmm interesting.

i know that when it comes to the dissertation process i'm already determined to "reframe" it...

The bookends to the process are a Proposal Defense, and the Dissertation Defense.

i know the word defense has such strong negative valence for me that i'm privately calling it proposal presentation and dissertation presentation... hoping that removing the word defense will help.

i know i still struggle with presentations, but it's even worse if i think i'm defending something.

you know i might have a fear of success... never looked at it that way. it's really difficult for me to admit that i've been successful in school thus far, i always expect that the next challenge is the one that will be my undoing.

[mosaic]

five of hearts, i envy your knack at presentations. it's always been a struggle for me, a lot of it going back to some childhood experiences that i don't need to go into here.

you are right though, a pass is a pass, and apparently the instructor was simply looking for completion of a presentation. despite her comments on the evaluation form i got full credit

[mosaic]

thanks, nats. it's actually nice to know of someone else who might go blank. i probably should have rehearsed more... but i did pass so i just need to rehearse like crazy when it comes to the official proposal presentation.

[nats]

so.completely.blank.
we delayed viva for years we were so scared. finally did it and was much easier than expected. b/c we knew our stuff and we did a mock viva. when you know your weaknesses you can practice to overcome them. that's the great thing about it!