Speaking Won’t Kill You (I Think)
It is said that many people would rather die than speak publicly. There was a time when I was one of those people. One thing I have been taught over time however, is that public presentations are often important ways to communicate your ideas and your reasoning behind them to large groups of people. I suppose there’s a reason behind why many college classes require presentations at some point, but many of us feel that they’re a waste of time. I would argue that even if you don’t think you’ll ever present again in your life, presenting is a good skill to have.
My personal history with presenting dates back to early middle school. While many have been graced with avoiding such activities, my parents were hard set on having me participate in science fair during most of my pre-college years. To those who enjoyed science fair every year, good for you. I absolutely loathed it. Roughly, the point of science fair was to have a bunch kids create an experiment on their own, do it, and the report the results to a bunch of adults who would throw out some ego-boosting ribbons to the participants. However, the adult judges would look to see if the kids had followed the proper scientific method, and if their research and actions when performing the experiments made sense. It was a good exercise in explaining why one went about things the way they did, and showing how much about their own experiment they actually knew. Communicating effectively was key. At the same time, the judges could provide feedback about what they liked, and what they thought needed improvement. While I never did grow to like science fair for multiple reasons that would sound like unprofessional whining if expressed here, I did learn to recognize in retrospect that it did provide some helpful advice: think about what you’re doing, learn how to clearly communicate your reasoning to others, and take feedback.
The ghost of presenting my work didn’t stop haunting me when I left for college. As it turns out, my local community college and the four-year college I transferred to both had classes which contained assignments designed to emphasize the importance of public speaking. Occasionally, I would have to present as a part of a group. Presenting as a group is a double-edged sword, as one only has to present a fraction of the work, but must rely on teammates who may or may not have prepared beforehand. Once I was part of a group which had to do a presentation on how to use Git, which is a program used to manage different versions of software during development. Watching another teammate who had obviously not studied beforehand read slides I had written word-for-word while barely taking their eyes off those slides was mildly infuriating, especially since they added no insight of their own to what they read. If I only needed someone to read the slides, I would have used text-to-speech software instead. I guess it goes to show that you may be the one who knows your material best. That being said, do the rest of us who have to give group presentations a favor and try your best to be a good teammate. Group presentations help teach how to collaboratively communicate with others. Sometimes you have to fill in the gaps in the silence when a partner doesn’t know how to proceed, and sometimes you need to know how to hand off the talk to a partner who is prepared for the topic which is covered next. There’s another dimension to the act when another human is added to the mix.
Ultimately though, as I’ve said before, the goal of a presentation is to clearly communicate. Not all of us like to give them, but they have a purpose, whether it be to better yourself or the understanding of others. Public speaking won’t kill you. (Usually.)
