And so I bombed my presentation

Business school is just chock full of endless presentations to prepare for. Sometimes I'm glad it's this way, sometimes I'm just tired of it all.

I glad because I love creating Powerpoint slides (really!). I'm also glad because presenting so often really builds up one's confidence. One almost becomes immune to the jitters. Almost. And because I feel like an actor performing on stage.

When a presentation goes really well, you get a natural "high". That's really the reward for the preparation. And many a times, it's worth it. But where there are much rewards, there's a similar amount of risk.

My worst fear came true today when I forgot what I wanted to say. Think of a stage actor saying his lines and then suddenly forgets what to say next. This increases his anxiety before he realised he could actually improvise.

Imagine looking at the audience anticipating the next word that comes out of your mouth, only to realise that your mind is blank all of a sudden. This must be the second time it happened in this semester. Both at the important presentations.

For now, I'm blaming my lack of preparation and my inflexible way of presenting. I guess missing sleep and preparing it overnight wasn't the best thing I could do. Especially when I aimed to do away with any reference to bullet points. If any lesson can be learnt here, it is to get a good night's sleep before the presentation. Things never worked well when I missed sleep.

I truly admire those who can stand up and do impromptu presentations. You can pretty much rank presentations according to difficulty

1. Presenting about something you know is easy.
2. Presenting about something you know and making it interesting is harder.
3. Presenting about something you don't know and making it seem like you do gets even harder. (I don't mean just bullshit. Impromptu bullshit that makes sense)
   
4. Presenting about something you don't know, making it seem like you do, and making it interesting all at the same time is GODLIKE!
   

Yeah, number 4 is pretty much where I want to be.

There's still one presentation left now. This time I'm preparing to save my own ass in case I venture into lala-land in the middle of the presentation. How? I don't know. Maybe I'd insert some self-deprecating humour about having a memory of an ant or something.