Friday, April 8, 2011

THE FOREBODING PRESENTATION ASSESSMENT 5

Gosh, can anybody feel and show any sympathy at all? I'm at the test of the devil, of one foreboding after another; first the emotional blackmail, then the profaned sex, then the implicit disaffectation of my teacher and classmates, and now the oral presentation. Could I really, on my own, engineer my own demise? No man is an island, so as surely I had the help of Brad and fellow course-mates!!!

Even for the worst part, I can proudly say I was the least understood out of the 4 speakers, or so I think, because not one person could find good words to, what would ordinarily to baronial audiences have been a crystal clear, and poignant analogy, between the rescue mission in the tsunami and the one in the sea of problem gamblers. In a word, their tears at the close would be token evidence of sure understanding of the problem’s context.

Again the only bad that materialized about my concluding role: it didn't draw the sort of epiphanic emotions from the audiences; while in the good I made sure I stuck, do or die, beg, steal or borrow, with the aristocratic ambience, in locution and moderation, of the likes of National Broadcasting Company and British Broadcasting Corporation, because theirs is of good patronage. I’m happy for these things I did to reasonable extents thus!

But Brad found no part in the presentation asking ‘how’ and ‘what’ to do with the proposal. If it wasn’t clear in the 3 other speakers, I might not have been able to do anything about it, but if it wasn’t in my part, that is unpardonable when I made three explicit statements all starting with “I want you to do this”.


Salud
Un Abrazito

6 comments:

  1. Dear people, I might have fulfilled your wishes of writing a much more concise post, but that took away alot of the fun of writing. You people stifled me!

    For me the fun in writing is the amount of time spent in it. Therefore the longer the post I need to write, the longer time I need to spent writing it, the more fun and kill-boredom I get out of it. Conciseness is not such a huge problem as you think it is for me, I just see writing and expressing as totally different from everybody in class, perhaps because I'm one to like to challenge the status quo or conventions, or otherwise. You couldn't blame me for that, could you?

    I was done writing the above post in fifteen minutes. Now can you imagine how much fun you took away from me, when writing usually takes me beyond thirty minutes? As much as you think me selfish for writing lengthy posts and not being courteous to readers, could it be you are just as selfish for repressing my daily stress-buster treat, which is failing to understand that writing means different things to different people; and unfortunately you are faced with someone like me, who thinks writing is fun enough to kick out all its brevity!!!

    Enough said, rest assured Brad and everybody, your efforts at teaching concise haven't gone by the wayside unto deaf ears, if I REALLY need to be concise a la business letters and cover letters, I'm just as good, if not better, than anybody!

    Salud chicas y chicos
    Un Besito

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  2. Hi Mark,

    In my opinion, the strengths of your presentation would be that you spoke clearly and forcefully, letting us see the passion that you have for your proposal. You had appropriate gestures as well, so kudos to you for that.

    For your weaknesses though, I felt that as someone presenting a conclusion to the presentation, you spoke for too long, and off topic with such heavy emphasis on the tsunami. Perhaps you have just mentioned the fact that the rescuers did not give up even though chances were slim, instead of going into such details, which took up too much time. While I knew what you were talking about, it felt hard to truly connect with your story, as it was mired in too much details.

    Also, while your eyes were moving around, I did not get any eye contact from you. I'm not sure if this was purposefully done, but it felt weird, especially when you asked me a question out of the blue, having not had any 'interaction' with me prior.

    Just my two cents worth, hope you don't mind. =)

    Cheers,
    Jake

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  3. Hey Jake, thanks for the comments!!

    I think you have more to say right? I thought you were holding back something haha!

    Open your heart out to me!

    Bueno

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  4. Hey Mark,

    Firstly for making all the effort in shortening the amount of things you intended to present. Even though some of our classmates found it a bit too long still, it might have been worse =).

    Also, I was a little taken aback when you mentioned that "we don't care" during the QnA session. I felt that such a strong statement might give the audience the wrong impression.

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  5. Hi Mark!

    Voice projection and gestures were good! The emphasis on certain words also made you sound enthusiastic and not monotone.

    However, I feel that a conclusion should be a wrap up of the project. A short story is good for us to have some take away points from the presentation. But unfortunately, your story was a little too long and it deviated from the main topic of the project. At the end of your presentation, I forgot about what was mentioned about problem gambling and wondered if the takeaway point is just "better late than never".

    Hwee Teng

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  6. Hey Greg and Hwee Teng,

    Thanks for the comments. In fact, just the fact that you commented, made my day, because I don't get comments too often, and whenever I get one, I treat it as gem, and you can be sure I'll swallow your content, digest it and reproduce improvements in all communication that I do in future.

    Un Abrazito

    ReplyDelete