Day 14

Wednesday March 30, 2011

I went up to the Atrium at 9 in order to have time to go over my presentation again and rehearse more. I had breakfast, relaxed and ate a banana. I felt pretty confident with my speech, and the last time I rehearse I did not even need my cue cards.

When I got to class I got really nervous because of other really good presentations...I need to stop comparing my work to others'. I feel like I got extremely (and unnecessarily) nervous; I don't think I have ever been that nervous over a presentation, for some reason.

As I was presenting, I could feel my eyes blinking especially hard and that was distracting as it had never happened to me before. I feel like I could have done way better, but I still think I did OK.

After class, I went to talk to Neal as he sent me an e-mail about being my advisor :) He is going out of town on Friday and we need to figure out how the SPG meeting will occur, as the deadline apparently is April 11 and he won't be back by then. However, we then talked to Negar, who agreed that she would meet with me and we could set up Neal on skype to talk about my question proposal and she could sign the necessary forms to get the paperwork done on time.

I came back to the room and worked on my foundation essays. for about 2 hours. Tomorrow I will work on my question proposal and my language essay.

I'm also kind of sad that we are not meeting in the classroom anymore!

Day 13

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Today I focused completely on rehearsing my presentation in front of an audience. Krigi and I stayed after class until 8.30, and had the chance to rehearse in front of each other using the projector. This was especially  helpful as we had the whole classroom to ourselves and we could use the space as if it was the real presentation.

I found that I get stuck when I'm nervous, I stutter and I move around and fidget with my hands. I also worked on my body posture and how I move around the classroom. Krigi was really helpful in pointing out if I started to speak to fast or too slow, or if I moved around too much.

We also worked on the length of our presentations, as mine was about 18 minutes long on the first go. I think it's because I was too nervous and got stuck at times. We used a timer and gave each other cues at 10 minutes, so we had an idea of where we were at that time.

Lucas and Elly also came in at one point, so we both had the chance to present to them and get more useful feedback. This was extremely helpful as I found that, the more people in the classroom, the more nervous I get... At the end I found myself to be way more excited about presenting and knowing my material pretty well. However, I am still really nervous.

I came back to South Village to make decent-looking cue cards. I rehearsed to my uncle on skype in order to see if a person who had never heard about my interests or question could understand and follow my presentation. He helped me in some areas that I did not give details on, and I took for granted that the audience would know.

Overall, I feel well-prepared for my presentation and I hope that I don't get too nervous. I will wake up early to go rehearse once or twice more up at the Atrium.

Day 12

Monday, March 28, 2011

Today, we had the first set of presentations in class. I was impressed by a couple of them, for example, Dylan's presentation was the first one and yet he didn't look nervous at all and spoke normally like he was just telling us about what he likes (which is pretty much what he did). That makes me nervous. Maybe I'm trying to make my presentation too...special.

I spent my time outside of class finishing up my powerpoint presentation, which took my around 4 hours. Also, I took an hour long break from working on the presentation and started working on my foundation program essays. I met up with Krigi to talk about the foundation program essays as I had some questions.

Tomorrow I will rehearse as much as I can, as I am done with the presentation itself. The content looks good to me so if I rehearse I should be fine, hopefully.

Day 11

Sunday, March 27^th, 2011

I woke up at 6am feeling very energetic and ready to work on my presentation all day. I went up to the academic building and set up in a break out room to work by myself. I worked from 9 to 11 am on the structure of my presentation, which I was struggling with. I also contemplated the idea of making a video of about 30 seconds in length to explain what the key words in my question, “reward” and “addictive behaviors”. I got stuck for a long time doing more research, even though I had already decided what definitions I was going to work with.

I met up with other classmates to discuss our presentation styles, and I felt more confident on my approach that I decided to work with. I spent about 4 hours writing and editing my speech.

After a while, I started spacing out and I regretted having woken up at 6 in the morning, so I took a nap in the learning commons. This nap was a moment of enlightenment as I dreamed about being on stage presenting my question proposal to the whole Quest community- faculty and students. I felt very confident about the design of my presentation, my outfit and my tone of voice. I will definitely take this into consideration when presenting tomorrow.

To make sure I was covering only relevant material, I called Brian to go over any details that could be improved from my question proposal. I was pleased to hear that there were not any major changes that needed to be done, and I continued to work on my presentation.

I presented what I had so far, which was about 4 slides, to Doreen and Victoria as my audience. I received constructive criticism regarding my body language, but I definitely had improved my control over my body language. I am currently working on putting my presentation together and plan to go to sleep before 3 am, unlike the past 5 days.

Day 10

Saturday, March 26^th, 2011

Today I woke up at 9am ready to start working on my Question Presentation. I have to admit that I am extremely nervous about it because of how shaky I felt on the mini presentation yesterday. I worked on 3 different outlines for the presentation, each one being a different presenting style. In the first one, I use a very formal style, aiming to present in the style of an honor thesis. I worked on this outline for about an hour, and spent another half an hour creating a rough draft of the corresponding PowerPoint presentation. I rehearsed for about 15 minutes, however, I did not feel confident enough to keep a straight face during the whole presentation and not be boring. I discarded this approach and moved on to a scientific approach. I worked on this outline for only 45 minutes, because I was aiming to explain very technical terms and I don't think that I could use this style throughout 20 minutes of presentation and keep the audience engaged.

I moved on to another style, which I identify myself with the best. A more relaxed, comical style that will allow me to interact with the audience and entertain them at the same time. I decided to take Alex Czuckor's advice on using drawings made by myself for the visual component of my presentation, as it will allow me to remember the points I intend to get across without having to write so much on my cue cards. Best case scenario, I will not need to use cue cards. I sketched drawings by hand for my slides, and planned to go to the library to scan them. However, I then used the software Paint to do the drawings and they turned out pretty well. I am content with this presentation style, and will stick to it. The sketching and drawing took me about 2 hours, but it was very fun.

I went up to the academic building to meet with Brian and get advice on the presentation, as I was unsure on aspects such as the length of the presentation. I also wanted to get feedback on my draft proposal, however, there was not enough time to go over it. I went back to my room and worked a for another hour on my sketches and started working on the PowerPoint presentation.

Day 9

Friday, March 24, 2011

I set up a meeting with Neal in order to talk about the components of my question. I was not sure about the actual fields of study that I should aim to explore throughout my concentration years. I want to focus in neuroscience, neurobiology and all the subjects that relate directly to the brain, but I know that I need the social/ethical/psychological aspects of addictions in order to answer my question thoroughly. I worked on an outline on paper for about 2 hours to take to my meeting with Neal so he could see my interests and hopefully suggest some good areas of study that I could focus on apart from the biological perspective. We met for a 45 minute lunch in which we talked about the different areas of study that I should include in my question. First of all, I realized that there is so much more to addictions than just neural networks firing up. The concept of “addictive personalities” came up in the discussion, and I am interested in exploring what makes a personality addictive.

I feel like right now I'm too biased towards the deterministic aspect of things, I'd like to think that our personalities are a direct result of the secretion neurotransmitters and hormones. I had an interest for psychodynamic and humanistic psychology, which are based on the more subjective aspects of human behavior. I spent about an hour looking through my IB psychology papers and documents. I feel like I just need to read more about the things I used to be interested in high school, because from doing so, I just started to remember and get excited about psychology.

Day 8

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Today we had Alex lead a workshop on effective presentations, so I have been trying to write down a list of aspects that I really need to work on for my presentation tomorrow:

• Moving back and forth, being in control of body language
• Up talking- ending each sentence as if it were a question
• REHEARSING! Looking in front of a mirror while I rehearse so I can take control over my body movement
• Eye contact.

Going over this list took me about 20 minutes, I used it as a break from my question proposal. It took me a long time to get my proposal polished, and I will get it reviewed by a peer tutor tomorrow morning. I am very content with the amount of research I had to do to get my proposal to an acceptable standard, as I got to read about the courses that are being offered during the next two years. I worked a total of 6 hours on my proposal, though I will work on it a little more tomorrow. I also put special attention to the structure of my draft proposal, as it will be very helpful to my Question Presentation on Monday if I can get it appropriately structured right now.

I worked on my PowerPoint presentation on the Squamish Helping Hands Society for about 2 hours, starting with an outline on the components of the presentation. I have to remember that outlines are especially useful to me in order to create a mental map of the points I plan to get across. I finished the presentation tonight, but I will work on my speech tomorrow morning.