6_TomS

Dear Professor Kim,

I believe that everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting in front of your peers. No presenter is perfect but you can become near perfect over time. The only way to do this is to realize your faults and resolve them. One of the conspicuous weaknesses I have when it comes to presenting is being nervous. I have found out that most people that have faults start with being timid when they get in front of people. Specifically for myself, my hands shake and I start to talk to fast. The problem with this is people can already tell that I get nervous. Out of all honesty, my shyness goes away when I know that another group member tells me that they are more nervous than me and I can also see it in their face that they are fearful.

Another distinct trait that I need to get out of my system is the bad eye contact issue. As a presenter, it is easy to focus on only the professor or certain people that are looking at you as well. I have this problem where I focus on maybe two people and tune the rest of the audience out. I can better this weakness by trying to look at the top of people’s head or gazing in the back of the room. An additional point that I would like to improve would be the transitioning from person to person. The presentation would flow much better if each of us introduced the next speaker and tell a little about what they are going to talk about. Most times I am so focused on what I am going to talk about that I forget to outline what I am going to say and because of this, I forget to introduce the next speaker. The action that I can take to prevent this would to just slow down and take a deep breath. Like I stated earlier, I seem to rush everything which I think comes from being nervous.

The last weak point I would love to overcome would be my posture when I am not speaking. I notice that I stare a lot at the ground, rock back and forth, and also cross my arms. It looks like I am not paying attention to the speaker but it’s actually my state of mind to where I am thinking about the presentation as a whole. It honestly looks terrible and I feel awful for my group members. It’s a comfortable feel for me to be appearing like that but it’s something I need to change. I need to stand with my hands to my side, smile, and gaze out into the audience. With the fixing of these negative points, I feel that I can become a much more confident and engaging presenter.