Does anyone else find presentations so hard?

[Meggy0001]

I sometimes feel like I have gotten used to things like presentations and I can do them without my voice quivering, my hands shaking, getting hot and flustered, increase in heart beat, sweaty hands, stuttering and et cetera but I just had to do one today and I have noticed that I have gotten worse :: didn't think that it was possible :/ I thought the more I do things like this the better I will get but seems not :|

 

[weberriver]

This may be stupid, but I find preparing a complete script beforehand to be very helpful. It's the only way I can sound remotely intelligent or funny in front of a crowd, because otherwise my mind goes completely blank from fear. And I always make sure that the script includes all the informal aspects of normal speech like um and uh. Those little pauses help my speech sound more natural, but they also keep me from agonizing too much over whether I sound like a robot. And funnily enough, I also end up saying less "ums" and "uhs" overall because I've already given myself a limit. Lol. The sweaty hands, racing heart, etc., are still there, but a lot more manageable.


And I don't practice for presentations either, unless it's to make sure it can fit within an allotted time limit or something. It might be counter-intuitive, but practicing just makes my anxiety worse. It's easier if I go up there while focusing on the actual content of the presentation, and not my ability to pull it off. If my presentation falls on its face, then I can just blame the script and not my nerves.

 

[Foxface]

I do, thank God, I don't do that often at all. My communication skills suck, and I have a Brain Processing Disorder, which means that me brain sometimes, does not handle information well. When I try to explain things, it sucks and I only get 10% of the information out. It weird, I'm really smart, but converting it to words, dosen't work very well. If only I can hook my brain up to something and people can see a video of what it is, I try to explain/ That would be much better.

My vocabulary isn't that good, so my English sucks. English is technically the only langage I know.

 

[MrJones]

I used to be awful with presentations, always very nervous and shaky, used to go blank and forget what I had to say.

This year I've done so many presentations for college that even though I still get nervous it's nothing compared to what I used to.

Also, it's important to remember that EVERYONE gets nervous before, during and even after a presentation. I bet even Steve Jobbs, for example, still got nervous during them. It's an important task, and a responsability, we want to do it well.

I've done around 25 presentations this scholar year, from september until this past june, and now I feel like I don't have any more problems than the average person.

 

[Canttakeanymore]

I have this problem a lot. The only way I can deal with it is to make a full script of what I need to say and plan everything out. Then I study that until I know it word for word. The downside is that I usually lose all the energy and excitement I had when I didn't know it by heart....