Facing the Audience

I’m really not confident when it comes to speaking in front of a crowd. I think the main reason is because I don’t speak English fluently, or rather, smoothly. And that proved to be the case with my presentation earlier today. I woke up earlier than usual. Got ready, had coffee and then I headed downstairs to Nina’s room. We wanted to grab some food before going into the class but since it’s the revision week, it’s hard to find food early in the morning so in we went with empty stomachs. But I guess the nerves drowned the hunger as we enter the classroom.

I have to say some of my friends have improved tremendously from the last time I saw them present. But I can’t judge that base on their talk because I was barely listening since I got the last slot and was pretty nervous. But I did catch some bits and pieces of their talks and saw how well some of them handled the questions raised by the lecturers. Well done, fellas. Everyone did quite well. Although I did not see anyone attempting the dubious that’s-a-very-good-question-I’ll-think-about-it technique as taught by someone we know.

Finally, after hours of Mathematics talks, formulas, equations, impossibilities, inventories, theorems, PDEs, graphs, and some coffee breaks, I was finally up. Surprisingly, the nerves had died down by then. I was close to Shangri-La (by that I mean calmness). I delivered my talk with some broken sentences, a bit of stutter and plentiful of self-doubt and contradictions to the words I utter. I was expecting skeptics from the crowd but fortunately, since I was the last presenter, they obviously got tired of sitting and listening so I only got two questions from the audience. And before I knew it, the coordinator was announcing the end of the presentation and everybody were clapping their hands. In my head, I was thinking, “That’s it? I’m done?” For a moment there, I couldn’t believe it, but there you go!

Happy Revision Week!

And I promise to upload all the photos to Facebook when I have a better internet connection, guys.