Sunday, 3 March 2013

Mirror mirror on the wall, reflect on GT, reflect on it all.

Hello dear readers. Today, the dish served is one of reflection, the bitter, and sweet impressions and thoughts of my GT presentation that occurred only a short while ago. These thoughts were compiled after an initial viewing of my recorded presentation, which has helped me in fully realising how... there exists large, gargantuan amounts of vacuous space that improvements can fill for presentations.

First off, it really is weird watching your own presentations, a surreal objective view of yourself recorded from a foreign eye, in jarring dissonance to the first person view that we are so used to conducting ourselves in. The third person view offers new insights into our conduct, and allows us effective scrutiny of even the smallest gestures that we don't pay attention to in our first person views. With that said however, the gestures we pick up in the videos may not be what we expect, and may be shocking. Certainly, my leaning/slouching posture was unexpected, and my hand gestures seemed restrained in my view. These observations have given rise to much distress, but better early realisation, than denial and stagnation.

My pitch variation was almost rhythmic, another startling realisation that means nothing but bad. It was no wonder then, that Brad found my presentation rehearsed, since it made any true injection of passion and emotion almost impossible, and I myself was inclined to feel that way.

All the critical stuff aside, I'd like to give a special shout-out to my group members for the GT presentation. Sarah, thank you for the beautiful slide formatting it was crucial in making my presentation effective. Annis and Hui Qi, the amount of effort you two put in is truly commendable, and it showed in the improvements to your presentations. The special Q&A session for our GT was a memorable experience, and I appreciate all of you for being such delightful GT mates.