The Engineers' Oral Presentation.

"We did it. We survived!"

That was the first thought that came to my mind after our oral presentation was officially over. It may sound trivial to some, but considering that the presentation was due in less than a week, an internal dispute was certainly worrying for all of us. Long story short, the dispute stemmed from communication breakdown. Nonetheless, it could actually have been a blessing in disguise. We not only overcame the differences, but also gained a better understanding of one another. This undoubtedly helped pave a smoother path of communication among the group after that.

I cannot deny how relieved and overwhelmed I felt when it was over. It was quite surreal for me, because it seemed like just yesterday that we decided to pursue the overcrowding problem for our proposal. Since all four of us were from Engineering, handling the content came off much easier, as the subject matter was not too much of a stranger to us.

Also, I felt that the mock oral presentation was a really good idea. I got a better sense of how my part can be fitted into the whole presentation. Before that, I was lacking all the "links" but thankfully, we had the run-through and received constructive feedback from Brad and Ronald's team on how to improve the structure, flow and organisation of our presentation. I personally thought the overlapping parts were more or less minimised during our final show, after we went back and rearranged it into a more logical flow.

As I was looking back at the video of our presentation, I couldn't help but cringe at my performance. My pace is clearly still a major flaw. I was staring at myself rattling off and I was thinking to myself, "Are you sure the video hasn't been tampered with?" Shiying actually told me about this after the presentation but I didn't know it was THAT fast. This is actually quite surprising for me, because I was feeling very sleepy during the presentation. While my other group members were presenting, I started feeling drowsy and lost balance halfway through my part and almost tripped on my own foot. This definitely distracted the audience and I slipped a subconscious "Sorry" that was caught by Sai and Sumea, who noted it down in the feedback for us.

Despite having a few rounds of rehearsal before this, I realised my choppy delivery was still very much peppered with awkward pauses, "Ahh", "Ummm" and "And". It was actually very uncomfortable listening to myself speak. I felt I knew what I had to say, but the pause fillers still flowed out so freely. My team members were always telling me to not "present from a script in my head" and if I miss out any point, I should just move on to the next one. Likewise, one of the main feedback I got from the mock presentation was to work on my "infamous" long pause, something that also happened during my peer teaching. So I am pretty happy to say that I managed to improve slightly, because my long pause didn't seem as long this time round!

On a side note, I am really very grateful to Shiying and Yongsheng for their reassuring responses throughout my entire presentation! It made me feel like I was engaging them and that actually boosted a teeny bit of confidence in me.

When it came to our visual cues, we had to maintain a dark surrounding for our slides to have its intended effect, so I hope that did not affect the audience much. I was actually very tempted to chuck away the slides after the attempt during mock presentation, but I realised the nature of our proposal did not allow us to try that stunt, nor did it encourage the use of Prezi. And so, PowerPoint took the stage once again. After receiving Rohit's feedback on the colour scheme, I am hoping the overall product did not turn out too incoherent after all.

Although my presentation skills are still far from ideal, I've had the time of my life learning through this entire process. It broke down my stage fright into the various specific aspects that I will need to work on for a smoother delivery in future.

And of course, I would like to say a big thank you to Chandra, Thao and Eric for making this team special in their own ways! Amidst all the fun, sweat and tears of effort, I hope we actually picked up more than just mere presentation skills!