Critical Reflection on Project Learning

In this project, there are many areas that I learned from and one of them is the presentation. I always had stage fright and was never good at presenting in front of a group of people.

Whenever I stand in front of people, I become nervous and lose my train of thought. I am unable to make eye contact as it would intensify my nervousness and causes my mind to go blank. There will be the urge to hold onto something and I mostly end up grabbing my own hands. My voice is normally monotone and adding to that, being nervous causes me to mumble, stutter and slur when I speak.

Through the project presentations, I realized that I have improved in a couple of areas. I could make eye contact with the audience and I do not grab my hands when I am presenting. I experienced my mind going blank but was able to carry on with the presentation. However, my voice and pronunciation still requires improvement as I did not make any progress in that area.

This experience showed me that practice can negate the cons of nervousness during presentations. The mock presentation really helped for the actual presentation and I could work on the points that people advised me on. In fact, the advising session was also a learning experience for me as I am not good with people I am not close to and one of my advisers is someone I do not know on a personal level, making me quite nervous.

Interpersonal communication has been an interesting topic as it is normally not observed intentionally but by doing so, I learned to speak to people better and handle situations in a more beneficial manner. This experience reminded me that I have a lot to improve on for my presentation and to intentionally be aware of situations and the appropriate manner to respond with.