eyes open

Eid mubarak everyone :)

The one in the photo is mine and the one in the screen is my person's

I know, I haven't been on the worldwide web for a while due to various commitments. But I just can't leave being me with no updates, can I?

It's obvious, I'm approaching my examination and this time it's bigger than ever. With 100 credits at stake, failures would result into failure of Year 4 (because the total number of credits is 180 and you cannot fail more than half). And you know I wouldn't talk about failure unless I'm serious about it. 

Nevertheless, I need to remind myself of something morale-boosting. That's why for the first time ever (I might be wrong) being me is going to give you tips! And this time it is on:

AW's How to Deliver A Top Notch Presentation!

If you've been reading my blog posts since KMBian days, you'd know that I'm crazy about doing presentations. Presentation is like the best type of assessment ever (followed closely behind by coursework).

And if you remember the module CFU (Community Follow-Up) from this post; I obtain a score of 100% for the presentation, alhamdulillah & the recent presentation I did a few weeks ago for my CHH (Child Health) module or Peadiatrics made me one of the students in the running for the Medical Student Prize :D

Technically, presentation is all about catching the eyes of the audience and the assessors. If you succeeded in doing that, your job is done. My tips are designed for the typical Microsoft Powerpoint slideshows, so here they are..

1. Use pictures

It's so easy to do yet so easy to miss. All you have to do is Google pictures and put them on your slideshow. Make your presentation filled with pictures. Not many people can stand slides of words. So, put some pictures in between...please!

Does this make you want to get into your duvet?

What about this one?

2. Don't adjust the font size

Unless you're using Prezi, don't you dare make the font size smaller. If you had to change the size of your fonts, that means you've put too many info and the old man sitting closest to the door will start to snore in the next 5 minutes. So...just...don't.

3. Eye contact

It is both my strength and my weakness. My strength because when I make eye contact with the audience, I sort of able to enchant them with my words but it's my weakness because I don't always have the will to look into their eyes because of my nerves. So yeah, make eye contact and you can rule the world.

4. Don't read from the slides

Seriously, don't. I would usually spend a good 1 hour practicing my presentation in my room (sometimes with a music in the background so that my housemates won't think that I've gone bonkers talking to myself in my room for a long period of time). I would make sure I remember what I want to say on specific slides rather than writing them down on pieces of notes. You can write on notes if you're presenting orally but if you have a slideshow, the slides can somehow serve as visual cues for you to remember what to say. It's up to you really..just don't read from the slides okay. The slides are for the audience to read NOT you.

5. Stick to the time given

I don't think I've ever surpassed the time limit for any given presentation unless of course, I need to surpass the time to pass the assessment. Like for the most recent presentation of mine, I had 44 slides and the assessor was like, "You're gonna have to start soon cause you have a lot of slides to go through" and when I finished in 8 minutes or so (the max time was 10 minutes), she commented, "I guess you can finish it in less than 10 minutes". Awesomeness! People do get annoyed if you went over your allocated time.

SPECIAL TIP!

6. Do something special

If you really want to stand out, make sure you leave an impression. Back in KMB, I remembered 2 of my best presentations:

i. English

It was a really simple presentation, and we only presented verbally but the special thing was that our points which were written on the whiteboard were concealed by pieces of paper and when we wanted to highlight the point, we would rip the paper apart from the whiteboard thus revealing the points. My teacher, Ms Nora Azany liked the audio effect which kept the audience interested in our presentation, alhamdulillah :)

ii. TOK (Theory of Knowledge)

Since I got good feedback for my Eng presentation, I used the audio revelation effect of the papers for my TOK presentation but this time, all of my team members wear toga. Google this to know what it means :P Our topic was on Atlantis, so the reason why we decided to wrap another piece of cloth around our daily attire.

If you're from KMB, you might remember this cool design. Well, I borrowed these 4 coloured sheets to be used as our toga, haha.

CFU on Prezi

To those who do not appear on my Prezi, that doesn't mean I don't remember you ^__^

As for my life in medical school; for CFU, which carries a considerably high percentage for my 1st degree, I used Prezi for the 1st time which definitely gave me a perfect score and as for the presentation a few weeks ago, I simply used a catchy title for my presentation (I cannot type the name of the title right now cause I don't want to be caught plagiarised from my own blog, lol). But an example would be from the title of my CFU coursework - Lean on Me which is obviously a song title.

-END-

I realized that I would always try to give an excellent performance whenever the presentation is something that would give me the chance to win a prize or an excellent result.

Yet Adlan Wafi, you failed to realize that your life is a performance of a lifetime. So why can't you show Him what you can do? So before the curtain call, you still have time to make an impression...