5 minutes and 37 seconds or 5 minutes and 40 seconds according to YouTube. Either way, this is about how long I spent viewing my very own Ted Talk so that I could be able to talk about it. No, I couldn't bare to watch it anymore than that. As I watched it, I couldn't stop myself from noticing just about every flaw like the number of times I touch my hair, gather my thoughts and slip out the word um, and just how awkward I look from the start. However, this talk wasn't completely bad and while I did have mistakes as such, over time I do get better.
Going into this talk, my main concern was eye contact. This time there would be no set of notecards for my eyes to fall on to. Instead, the words were collected in my brain and all I ad to do was recite while slowly taking glance all around the word; keyword slowly. If you really pay attention, at the very beginning you'll notice that my sight keeps going to the right of me and it almost looks as if I'm looking at the screen. However, that was simply me giving contact to those seated at the side. While engaging with that part of the audience was important, I seemed to overcompensate and I have to admit, the rate at which I scan the room almost makes it look like my head is spinning. After some time, I get much better about this and scan the room much more gradually. I didn't realize just how important the rate of eye contact could be but this was one of my concerns after watching this.
Secondly, while I can say I knew my content pretty well, I was surprised at how many "ums" I heard. I definitely don't remember saying it about 7 times. So, when I saw this I started to wonder why and in watching the video made it too obvious. Most of the time, when I said "um", you could see me looking up and gather my thoughts on what to say next. The pause in which I'm thinking about what to say must've been too difficult for me to handle and rather than have a pause, my immediate reaction was "um". For next time, I must own my content and know it better. I must practice more. That is the only way I can be sure that the content doesn't slip my mind and I don't continue to use that awful filler.
While I couldn't help to notice all things wrong, I think I did some good things as well. The eye contact may have started bad, but overtime it was more natural and much more effective. I think I also had good content and what I was saying did a great job of both telling a story and giving out new information. This wasn't my best performance but it was a learning one and it can only get better from here!
Going into this talk, my main concern was eye contact. This time there would be no set of notecards for my eyes to fall on to. Instead, the words were collected in my brain and all I ad to do was recite while slowly taking glance all around the word; keyword slowly. If you really pay attention, at the very beginning you'll notice that my sight keeps going to the right of me and it almost looks as if I'm looking at the screen. However, that was simply me giving contact to those seated at the side. While engaging with that part of the audience was important, I seemed to overcompensate and I have to admit, the rate at which I scan the room almost makes it look like my head is spinning. After some time, I get much better about this and scan the room much more gradually. I didn't realize just how important the rate of eye contact could be but this was one of my concerns after watching this.
Secondly, while I can say I knew my content pretty well, I was surprised at how many "ums" I heard. I definitely don't remember saying it about 7 times. So, when I saw this I started to wonder why and in watching the video made it too obvious. Most of the time, when I said "um", you could see me looking up and gather my thoughts on what to say next. The pause in which I'm thinking about what to say must've been too difficult for me to handle and rather than have a pause, my immediate reaction was "um". For next time, I must own my content and know it better. I must practice more. That is the only way I can be sure that the content doesn't slip my mind and I don't continue to use that awful filler.
While I couldn't help to notice all things wrong, I think I did some good things as well. The eye contact may have started bad, but overtime it was more natural and much more effective. I think I also had good content and what I was saying did a great job of both telling a story and giving out new information. This wasn't my best performance but it was a learning one and it can only get better from here!
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