Posted: January 8th, 2016

What is your “story”? How would you summarize your life’s experiences?

The essence of presentation is making yourself known, along with your ideas. There are at least two reasons to begin the planning of any presentation with a consideration of yourself. The first is that your knowledge of yourself and what you are thinking about provides a solid foundation for elaborating on your ideas and your topics. The second is that your constant self-assessment means that you can define and communicate your own feelings and beliefs about a topic from a deeper level of metacognition, or self-knowledge, and can therefore think more critically and objectively about your topic.

Before building a presentation, consider the types of things that you have done and the types of things that are important to you. These things will be woven into every presentation you give, whether formal or informal, large or small, and regardless of the topic. Here, you will think about yourself as a primary topic and reflect upon your own academic and professional goals. This approach to preparation will influence the ways in which you present in the future.

Part A

In paragraph form, answer the following questions that may affect how you think about presentations, your topics, and your audience:

• What is your “story”? How would you summarize your life’s experiences?
• How have those experiences, overall, shaped you as a professional? How have they shaped you as a university student?
• What have you learned from your previous experiences in making formal or informal presentations to others?