Presentation Day

I'm back!

Yesterday was our Senior SEM-posium. In short, it was time for each student in the senior seminar class to present a 10 to 12 minutes presentation summarizing our research and our project.

And considering my project was on voice and confidence, I thought it would be smart to record my presentation and share it on my website. While I was turned off to the idea of going back and watching myself present this -I forced myself to do it and I am now forcing myself to share it with you all.

Question:(asked by a classmate yesterday) How much voice work did you do before the presentation?

Answer: Some- I did some neck rolls, shoulder shrugs, rolling up and down my spine, and some breathing and touch of sound. And yes, I wish I did more. It was around 8:00 AM in the morning when I arrived and ran through my presentation. I did some voice work and then sat through four classmate's presentations for about an hour before I finally went. And although I have gained a lot more confidence in my voice, I still get nervous and am always trying to improve.

Things I think went well:

• Organization of presentation- I think I presented the information in a way that made sense to my project and the way my research spanned out.

• Summary of Research- I believe I hit the highlights well- it was impossible to cover all of my research into a 10 minute presentation.

• Some vocally strong moments-I lit up some while discussing my journey in the department and when talking about me as a person and as a woman.

Things that could have been improved:

• Slowing down- I was under time because I was worried about going over time which caused me to rush through my presentation and cut some of the work I had originally planned on presenting.

• Grounding my feet- A lot of happy feet/moving back and forth.

• Saying um- I wish I had more of my presentation fully memorized because I think it would have helped lessen the amounts of um's I used.

Overall, I was pretty happy with my presentation and my project in general. Just a reminder that these blog posts contained SUMMARIZED versions of the exercises from the books listed on each of the vocal techniques pages. I am in no way trying to copy their work or give a full description of the exercise. I am not an expert and this was a personal experience so please keep this in mind when reading through these posts. If you are interested in this work I would encourage you to get the books yourself or even take a voice class.

Thank you for following along and I would love to talk with you further about this project if you are interested.

Chelsea Janke