Everything you do leads up to some sort of presentation, whether its presenting an idea to parents or talking to people about a new invention. Well, that’s what happened with Capstone, our end of the year project in fifth grade.
Okay, so by this point, we have chosen our topic, thought of a question to answer, completed an interview and site visit, finished all of our research and answered the question we asked in the beginning. Now, we are getting ready to present this.
I have decided to present my information through a TED-talk. We’ve been given three options on how to present our info; through a video, through an Ignite(where each slide is runs for fifteen seconds and through about ten slides, we talk about Capstone) and through a TED-talk(where we can talk for as long as I want). I’ve chosen to do a TED-talk because I’ve had so much information that I wanted to share.
For a TED-talk, we need some different slides with pictures. My topic was Sparta, an ancient Greek civilization, so you can probably guess how hard it was to find decent, appropriate pictures. It might seem easy, but it wasn’t. Finally, I found pictures of guys who were fighting for most of the slides. I was glad to be done with that.
What next? Well, now we have to present. I wrote a long speech to start with that was filled with boring facts, but I ended up cutting it down from 13 pages, to 7. That is something I am proud of. But now, I have to practice this script and even seven pages was too much. Every free minute, I practice this script. Yet I still don’t feel prepared.
We started to present in front of the class. I thought I was well prepared. But I wasn’t. I stumbled through my lines and felt so many eyes staring at me. It was freaking me out. I could tell I wasn’t good with my script and I stopped wanting to present in front of the class.
You see, I don’t do well in front of crowds. And we were given only 3 weeks to practice. So I do everything I can to practice every moment I can. You can probably see how stressed out I was.
One of the problems was my pictures. The images on your slide are supposed to remind you things to share. But mine were literally just pictures of fighting. There was nothing to help and remind me. So, I had to go backwards. I put some text onto the boxes that told a bit of my story. I prayed it would help me.
So, feeling confident, I volunteered up to go in front of the class. I went up, feeling nervous. Halfway through my first slide, I tried to talk without my script. I was good for the first sentence but then, I blanked out. Yet when I looked at the text on my script, it came back to me. I went through the presentation well, and I think I’ve gained back most of my confidence. Hopefully, this will aid me in my final presentation, like it did when I was presenting. Because if this doesn’t, I don’t know what will.
Capstone deadline is creeping up on us. In less than a week, I’ll be presenting. But I don’t think I’m scared anymore. I believe that if I keep practicing and doing things like I am, it’ll turn out to be okay. And soon, I’ll be presenting. Hopefully, it’ll be okay.