Why So... Shaky?

A review of my own Ted style Talk

The Paradigm Shift Essay was my favorite part of RCL yet. Having found a topic I actually enjoyed researching and talking about, the process of preparation and writing was smooth.

The Paradigm Shift Essay took me a good week to draft. There were many points I wished to cover about my Transition in the Superhero genre, and I was extremely satisfied with my final essay. A confidence in the content of my essay was a major boost when I had to prepare my speech. I knew I could go back and use literally the same sentences from my essay (being a conversational writer), while drafting my speech.

It took me about two and a half hours to write my speech. Cutting short on the content to fit an appropriate time range was painful - as I did not wish to get ride of the wide variety of pointers I had found during my research; yet, that had to be done. The above mentioned time was inclusive of polishing the wordings to fit my own flow of speech, but excluded the time it took to prepare the slides and practice speaking.

Preparing the slides was easy, except the part where I had a 2 second video, needed to add some humor in my speech - which it certainly did. I had to get the timing exactly right, and that involved a lot of practice with speaking and presenting at the same time. A shift from manually pressing a key on the keyboard, to using the clicker to change slides messed things a little bit, which I should have anticipated.

I panicked before my speech, and had to speak with Ms. Kramer for a little pep talk. I'm glad I received that. I walked into my speech with confidence, aware of my confident, but not certain enough of the order of things.

This is how it went:

I spoke super fast, because I was hoping that the order of my content would easily come to me if I presented the whole speech in one quick flow - not the best idea.

The moments where I had to glance at my slides to refer to the order of my content should have definitely been avoided, which indicated a lack of preparation. I practiced only 2 hours, the night before - not recommended. I was loud, however, to an appropriate extent. That helped in convincing everyone that I was confident and prepared, even myself. 

A better co-ordination between the clicker and my words were needed, that would have helped me to give a more fluid presentation, and would significantly improve the impact of my images and points. I despise my voice when heard in videos (who doesn't?), but I sound enthusiastic, and the reactions I received from my class, furthered that energy that I was speaking with.

Overall, I could have definitely worked more, to make my speech more coherent, and my sentences more crisp. Timing could have been better managed, and certain pauses were needed - but a lack of prep did not allow for any effective pauses. However, at the end, seeing the audience nod in agreement instead of nodding with drowsiness was a big win-win. Who doesn't like to see their audience laugh, (unless you have a sob-story ofcourse), and I am glad to have been entertaining.

I moved ALOT, mainly to look at everyone. Towards the end, I was moving around so much, that my nervousness (that hopefully only I knew about), was manifesting in my motions. Why so shaky, I asked myself. I guess some errors are inevitable, until you learn to not make them - the hard way. Better prepare more next time, Shwetanc!