Presentation woes

In the past 2 weeks, I've had 2 big presentations. I haven't had any presentations in English since my English 118 days and that was in Freshman year. There is a huge difference between presenting in English 118 and in a technical communicaions class, EPD 397. In 118, everybody in that class comes from a non-English speaking background and their english sucked just as bad as mine. You don't really give a shit if you make grammatical mistakes or you just can't fine the right words to describe what you're saying; because in that class you are expected to make those silly idiotic errors.

This is definitely not the case in EPD 397. The majority of my classmates are white males (there is one white chick and she's cute too WOWIE). There are a couple of Asians but they are either Asian-Americans or Asians who have lived in the States for a couple of years before going to college. And then there's me, a dude who only started speaking English in Freshman year, or perhaps Sophomore coz most of the time I hanged out with Malaysian anyways so not much of English was used then.

But that was then and this is now. My English is probably 10 times better than it was in Freshman year but still not good enough compared to the Americans. As a matter of fact, like a month ago I had to give a 2 minute talk in front of the class and I was already a nervous wreck. I know it's only 2 minutes but the thing is I have a phobia speaking in front of people.

Yes I do have a fear that people might laugh at me when I talk and this has been going on since the start of my school days or perhaps even kindergarten. If you have read my first couple of writings on this blog, like a year ago or something I wrote about how I got badwool to be the address of my blog. Yes that's how I would pronouce my own name back in day, even until I was 16 years old. Everybody in the class laughed at me, including the teachers everytime I introduced myself. How the hell do you think I felt when even my closest friends were ROFL coz I couldn't say my own name?

It was a month or two after I entered MRSM PC did I first able to pronounce my own name the right way. I remembered during the first week I called Serip, Aswif and he didn't even realize I was calling him. I was the only one in the school who called him Omar (His name is Asrif Omar). But that all changed after a couple of weeks, I actually practiced pronouncing the letter 'r' since elementary/primary school but I only got it right at the age of 16. You heard that? Nak sebut huruf R pon kene practice.

Anyhew, bcoz I had that fear of being laughed at, I was practically shaking in front of those people, both in my group and individual presentation. Both presentation lasted about 15 minutes. I mean my fingers were trembling. Somehow I kept on doing 'uhhh' and 'aaaa'. I could at least practice for the presentation part, but there was still the Question & Answer session. That's the part where I got grilled 'well done'. I just didn't know what to expect from my instructor of my classmates. Sometimes they'll ask you like super hard core questions, that requires you to think outside the box or whuteva.

That's what actually happened during my group presentation. My instructor told commented "That's not what the question is asking you to do. You're suppose to be talking bout how blahblahblah." Kantoi depan sume org. My group was so shocked, we were basically speechless. Didn't know how to defend ourselves.

Thank god for my research paper was about the Environmental Impacts of Using Palm Oil as a Biofuel. My individual presentation wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. None of my classmates no anything about Palm Oil. warghwarghwargh. All of them asked me stupid questions, it wasn't challenging at all. Thank god.