I’m gonna start by saying that i’m not sure if this is the right place to post this but i’m gonna go ahead and do it anyway so please excuse me if i indeed posted at the wrong sub.
So, i have my thesis presentation tomorrow and i am really nervous about it. I have not been good at presenting in front of a huge audience and it makes me really very nervous to a point.. where I feel like throwing up.
I know I have done good work to talk about it and I am not afraid of taking criticism, I welcome it especially for my thesis.
I just really want to get into the habit (?) of presenting.
Any tips in this realm would be very helpful. Thank you.
3 comments
I don’t know if there is a universal way to work this out, well I’ve never read anything about it so this will be purely based on experience. While I’ve never been nervous to the point of throwing up, I had to do presentations in front of a few hundred people at one point which were really stressful to me. I had a small routine, the first step was knowing exactly everything I wanted to say, so simulating in front of a mirror again and again and again, and then on the day of the presentation, I would cut myself from the outside world around ~20/30 min before the presentation, and listen to really heavy music, really loud to clear my mind. I think it worked out quite fine.
A friend of mine, quite in the same situation used to do “public” rehearsals with friends where we would do the most dumb shit possible around her while she was rehearsing (like standing really really close to her face, poking her on the back, doing crawling races… Whatever we could think about), and she was not leaving the room until she was able to do a full presentation without laughing or losing her words. Used to work out quite well for her too. I guess you need to find your one thing that makes you confident enough that it can take over your stress. However, this is easier said than done, I know. Good luck for you thesis though, hope you’ll succeed !
Practice your talk as much as possible. Do it in front of other people if you can.
Sometimes some of the physical things we feel in a state of nervous tension are actually similar to what we feel when we’re enthusiastic about something. So try telling yourself how excited you are about the presentation, and when you feel those butterflies that is WHY.