Hey Everyone,
This week is literally the final stretch for everything, and I can't wait to finish my presentations, and finally finish research. It's been a really great time, and I've definitely learned a lot.
Let's get right into the presentations. My first presentation on Friday was eh. Most of the material was there, but I still spoke too fast and had too many technical concepts up. I think the big problem was some of the material I decided to include in my slides. Basically, after talking to Mr. Molk, Mrs. Haag, and all the other wonderful teachers, I found out that a lot of the math I thought was important in the presentation really wasn't. So I took a lot of the math stuff out of my presentation (it's a lot more understandable now). Next, as I kind of suspected before, the tables for the multiple accuracy were way too complicated. I've substituted the tables for graphs instead. This both allows the audience to better understand what I'm talking about, and allows me to save time because I don't have to talk about the numbers that the tables produced in the graph. The last issue I had with my presentation on Friday was the lack of solid explanation for my methods, both in speech and on the slides.
Personally, I think I've fixed most of the mistakes I made on Friday. Saturday's presentation went MUCH better, and I now know the way that I should be explaining each slide and part of my research paper to other people. I have a few tweaks that I need to implement on my slides such as making certain bullet points more parallel, and clarifying certain figures, but for the most part, I'm feeling really confident about my presentation. When giving my actual presentation this Friday, I need to remember to speak very slowly and reiterate the definitions of certain key terms repeatedly. Even with a lot of the technical stuff removed from my presentation, it's still pretty hard to follow because of the esoteric nature of financial lingo.
Practice does make perfect, though, so for now, I'm working on the few critiques I got on Saturday (making sure I fully explain the initial drawbacks of market booms and citing one source), and I'm sure I'll be ready for Friday by the time by last practice presentation rolls around on Tuesday.
Cautiously Excited,
Akash
This week is literally the final stretch for everything, and I can't wait to finish my presentations, and finally finish research. It's been a really great time, and I've definitely learned a lot.
Let's get right into the presentations. My first presentation on Friday was eh. Most of the material was there, but I still spoke too fast and had too many technical concepts up. I think the big problem was some of the material I decided to include in my slides. Basically, after talking to Mr. Molk, Mrs. Haag, and all the other wonderful teachers, I found out that a lot of the math I thought was important in the presentation really wasn't. So I took a lot of the math stuff out of my presentation (it's a lot more understandable now). Next, as I kind of suspected before, the tables for the multiple accuracy were way too complicated. I've substituted the tables for graphs instead. This both allows the audience to better understand what I'm talking about, and allows me to save time because I don't have to talk about the numbers that the tables produced in the graph. The last issue I had with my presentation on Friday was the lack of solid explanation for my methods, both in speech and on the slides.
Personally, I think I've fixed most of the mistakes I made on Friday. Saturday's presentation went MUCH better, and I now know the way that I should be explaining each slide and part of my research paper to other people. I have a few tweaks that I need to implement on my slides such as making certain bullet points more parallel, and clarifying certain figures, but for the most part, I'm feeling really confident about my presentation. When giving my actual presentation this Friday, I need to remember to speak very slowly and reiterate the definitions of certain key terms repeatedly. Even with a lot of the technical stuff removed from my presentation, it's still pretty hard to follow because of the esoteric nature of financial lingo.
Practice does make perfect, though, so for now, I'm working on the few critiques I got on Saturday (making sure I fully explain the initial drawbacks of market booms and citing one source), and I'm sure I'll be ready for Friday by the time by last practice presentation rolls around on Tuesday.
Cautiously Excited,
Akash
Hey Akash!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with everything that you have pointed out -- your research is super technical and therefore needs to presented carefully to be understandable. I think the use of figures, as you said, is instrumental in this. I would definitely focus more on your results/discussion section, because you can totally explain the ideas behind your research much simpler, since the presentation is really about YOUR research, not others. Also, this will make everything more understandable, since you are linking it to real life stuff, which always makes people more interested.
Pumped for friday!!
Hey Akash!!!
ReplyDeleteI think it was a great idea to take out a lot of the math from your presentation! I know you really enjoy math and it makes great sense to you, but for such a short presentation where the audience is already being introduced to financial jargon, I think you made the right choice to remove a lot of it. I also agree with where you chose graphs over charts, as it is just much easier to visualize the information quickly during a presentation. It's amazing that you feel great about your presentation and I think you have the best mindset of continuing to practice your script and eventually removing the cautious from the excited :)
Hey Akash!
ReplyDeleteI agree that cutting out a lot of the math and tables was a good idea for making your presentation easier to follow. I think that since you have such a technical paper, it will help a lot if you focus on the explanations of what you found, instead of focusing on the numbers and the process used. Additionally, this also means that you are really going to have to focus on slowly and clearly explaining what you mean with everything, because most, if not all, of your audience will not have a finance background. Anyways, it sounds like you are pretty confident about the state of your presentation, so keep up the good work and stay focused!
Akash -- I agree that Saturday's iteration was much better than Friday's, but I fear that you may have grown arrogant in our praise of your from Saturday. You still needed to fix a few things in your presentation, to make it more dynamic and engaging. Particularly, the slides at the end of your presentation were a little flat and felt more like notes for you, than helpful indicators for the audience. I think with more synergistic graphics, you'll find that the presentation will flow a lot smooth and thus quicker. I fully believe in your ability to make this presentation fantastic. I am so eager to see not only your final presentation, but to see all that you're going to do in college and beyond. You're great -- keep it up, you've got this!
ReplyDelete