Emily Fernandez Post 1

 Reflection on Class Presentations

Emily Fernandez

         My name is Emily and one thing about me is that I definitely do not consider myself to be a reserved person, nor a timid person who struggles when it comes to speaking with others. If I am being completely honest, I actually quite enjoy the whole aspect of speaking to someone and coming out of that conversation knowing something you had not known prior to having that conversation. It truly intrigues me, whether it was about that persons life or just some random fact that you had never heard about, you would be surprised by how much I have learned by simply walking up to people and having conversation.  Knowing this, I was quite excited to to not only present but to also learn something new from the other groups. At the same time, I was a bit nervous. What if I messed up, what if I slurred my words. Many things were going through my head, but ultimately I was proud and confident of what I had done and because of that i knew that whatever I did, it could not be that bad.

Group 1

Group 1 was the first group to start off the presentations covering chapters 1-4 in the book. I know that being first can sometimes be intimidating because everyone is so hyper focused on you, but I believe they did a really amazing jobs at keeping their composure when it was time for them to speak. Some people might say that they used too many videos in their presentations and although they did use quite a few, sometimes its just better that way. Sometimes people don't want to hear your voice and look at a screen full of words, and sometimes people just want to enjoy a well edited video that catches their attention and makes it easy to understand the topic that they are talking about. I know that for me there were some videos in group 1's presentation that I quite literally laughed at loud in and had my complete attention. The whole point of a presentation is not always to sit there and talk, but to present and inform and the videos certainly aided in informing us on the topic. Although, I don't see a problem with the amount of videos that were incorporated in the presentation, I do not think it would have hurt for each presenter to talk a bit more and give a little more information on their individual topics. That is the only thing that I would have tweaked, but other than that, I still thoroughly enjoyed group 1's presentation on chapters 1-4.

Group 2

Group 2 was my my group and I felt like with all the different hurdles in front of us we still pulled through. There were many times that we had trouble meting up because of conflicting schedules and there was even a matter of getting things mixed up because of how many people we had in our group. Our group had the most chapters out of all the groups, we had chapter 5-9 and it was both a blessing and a curse. Since we had so much information to work with, it was quite easy to reach the 45 minute mark minimum that was given to us. At the same time, our presentation lasted a very long time. 1 hour, 8 minutes and 40 seconds to be exact (I timed it), because we spent so much time and we did not have as many videos as group 1 as well as the fact that we were an hour into class, I think it is safe to say we did not have everyone's attention our whole presentation. Although at times we may have lost some peoples attention I still believe that my group did a really great job in properly presenting our information. Everything looked cohesive and ultimately we completed our presentation with not too many hiccups.

Group 3

Group 3 was presenting chapter 10-12 and was the final group to present and I believe that put them at an extreme disadvantage. After 45 minutes of group 1's presentation and over an hour for group 2, I feel like not only were they drained, but so was everyone else in the class because of how long the class is. Although they were last to go, that did not mean that they did any worse than the other two groups. I thought they did a really nice job when it came to the overall look of their presentation. Everything was very nice to look at and everyone who presented was well informed on their topics and were able to properly inform us on the different topics. I truly give them props on staying so focused until the end and ultimately offer the class a very well made presentation.

Conclusion

I believe that our first class presentation went as well as it could have gone. Every group had to cover a certain amount of chapters and each person had to speak on a different topic. Every group presentation did its job in presenting and informing the other classmates on information they had not known previously and I believe that this also helped everyone get over public speaking even if it was just a little bit.