Presentation

Written by Matthew Needham

I have always had the fear of speaking in front of people. Oh, I’ll goof off and make back row comments and the whole room could look my way and I wouldn’t even change a shade. However, the second I’m given a time slot and a topic and told to speak for a certain amount of time, all inhibition comes back and its hard to speak without getting nervous, messing up, and fidgeting constantly. Well after years of being plagued by this, I found a solution.

I recently took part in a presentation competition at school here that the engineering department put on. We were allowed to present anything we were working on; whether for class or for personal projects. I happened to have spent roughly sixty hours throughout this semester and last on the pursuit of modeling and printing a functional scaled four-bladed rigid helicopter rotor system. Having studied fixed, semirigid, and fully articulated in much detail on my own time, I had a vast understanding of the subject and much to say whenever someone found me in the lab working on it. I figured that I would use the opportunity of the competition to tell others about what my personal studies and project had taught me. And for the first time in my life, I gave the speech and presentation without a care in the world; no nerves, no issues (except going two minutes over time), and not a worry in the world. Just me presenting something I was passionate about.

The lesson I learned through this experience is that presenting something is most likely a fruitless endeavor if the point is to actually convey ideas and passion unless you yourself are passionate about it. I guess speeches on subcutaneous tissues, sleep’s effects on students, and the governments implementation of federal minimum wage just hadn’t gotten me passionate at the time so I never understood what it was like to present something I loved, was passionate about, and had extensive knowledge and experience about. Now I do.