Third post- reflections on GT and FOP

Hi readers! My post today will be my reflections on my Group Training (GT) and FOP.

I had my GT about a month ago, just after the Chinese New Year holiday. I remember I was quite stressed over my GT presentation during visiting HAHA. My group members were Kee Yee and Wei Ni, despite being a 3 women team (we were short of one member), I think we did a great job as a team :) we would meet twice a week after class just to finalize our content, which I think was pretty well done based on the feedback given by the class.

On our presentation day, all 3 of us were dressed very professionally in black and white with lanyards! :) I do admit that I was a little nervous during my presentation, as some could tell, as afterall it was our first proper presentation for ES2002! I also thought at I was quite stiff during my presentation without much hand gestures. Based on the feedback given to me by the class, most of them said that I was a little shaky at the start, probably because I was nervous. (I forgot to do some power poses before my presentation :( ) They also said that it was quite obvious that I had memorized a script as I was just going on and on with little pauses, and my hand gestures were constrained within a small box. However, they said that my tone variation and eye contact was okay :)

Fast forwarding to my FOP, which was on Last Monday, I felt that I was much more prepared this time round. All of us had to do a report write-up on our individual issues, which I think made us more familiar with the content and thus easier for us to internalize the content required for our presentation. I started rehearsing for my FOP about a week before the actual presentation and I made sure I worked on my weaknesses as pointed out by my classmates during the GT. Also this time, I tried not to memorise from a script as it would make my presentation seem unnatural, which is not what we want to achieve out of a presentation. We had a presentation after our presentation, and the feedback given to me was much more positive this time round and all of the presenters also made improvements :) Basically, they said that even though I was confident during my presentation, I was not as natural and convincing as I should be! However, they also said that my content was well organized and my recommendations were well substantiated :) I personally feel that being natural and convincing during a presentation are one of the more difficult skills to master, as compared to hand gestures and eye contact etc. However, that does not mean that I should not try! As Wayne Gretzky said, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take". So we should never stop trying! Lets keep all these in mind, learn from one another and work hard for the last lap :)