Reusable Sanitary Napkins: The Presentation, the Feedback and the Reflection
Before presenting at the Academic Extravaganza, I must say I was a little nervous. Although my group prepared beforehand, I have to admit that looking back I compared our topic with the other groups in our class and I became unnerved.
It was quite a surprise and a blessing when my group was recognized as the best in the show. Many people have told us it was because our topic was so unique and brought awareness to an undermined issue. We were immensely thankful for the recognition, but I feel the main reason behind our success was the amount of cooperation, effort, and strength my group members held that overall made us have a strong presentation.
Just thirty minutes before my group and I entered the Extravaganza, we were in the Commons eating breakfast and frantically practicing what we were going to say. We wrote notecards of the points we were going to discuss, presented to each other and corrected the things we were having trouble with such as making eye contact with the audience and paraphrasing material from our notecards. We probably weren’t the only group that did this, but this simple run-through was very reassuring. In our presentation, the topics we discussed were co-dependent to one another, so we needed to figure out smooth transitions between each group member. This was a struggle at first, but what made it reassuring was when we realized how our points were dependent, so we worked in a way where one person was not speaking for too long and we formed key words to connect our topics. This made the presentation so much more flexible and relaxed to the point that if one of us forgot our points, another could easily remind them or add onto what was already said.
When we finally went to the Extravaganza, all I remember is being told to choose a table and try to grab the judges attention. With all of the other poster boards around, grabbing the judges’ attention didn’t seem like an easy task. Fortunately, my group came through once again. We did everything in our power to draw the judges’ and students’ attention and thankfully our efforts worked. Several times we turned our poster board in the direction where the crowd was, we split up and walked over to judges and asked them, “Do you know the scary truth behind pads and tampons,” and when we did present, we got all up in the faces of our audience. As a group, we put in the same amount of effort in presenting at the Extravaganza to the point where it made the process amusing. Our audience seemed to enjoy our efforts as well. Many would say this is expected when working with group members, but I believe this was the key to our success because many times before I have worked with others who could not care less. With this, I am incredibly thankful for my group members.
Overall, I believe we won not because of our topic, but simply because both of my group members went above and beyond on the parts they were assigned to do. Anyone can have the most interesting and unheard of topic, but if the execution and devotion are not there, neither will the success be in the future.
