Coming into college, I was scared of a lot of things — big lecture halls, difficult exams, and most of all, presentations. I rarely had to do presentations in high school, and when I did, they were a train wreck. I would stay up stressing the whole night before and then end up rushing through my slides with a shaky voice and red cheeks. Now, as I wrap up my junior year of college, I am heading into a lot of final project presentations and reflecting on how much I’ve improved my presenting skills over the years. These are the strategies I have found that make all the difference for me.
Put things in perspective
When it comes to presentations, especially in college courses, the stakes can feel very high. Presentations can be big factors in your final course grade, and they are normally the culmination of weeks of research, hard work, and collaboration. This inherently puts a lot of pressure on an already stressful situation, worsening your anxiety going into it.
One thing that helps me get over this fear and alleviate stress is taking a second to put things in perspective. When you are presenting in a college class, the audience is full of your peers who are all in the same situation as you. No one else understands what you are going through more than your classmates, and honestly, no one really cares. Everyone watching you present is 10 times more worried about themselves and their own presentation than anything you are doing.
No one is out to get you, and no one wants to see you fail. Even your professor just wants to see you succeed and hear about what you have learned. Reminding myself of this, especially in those final moments before I walk up to the front of the class, calms me down and takes the pressure off, making me a more confident and collected speaker.
Seek out low pressure opportunities
Public speaking and presenting are important skills that almost all of us will need in our future careers, so it is important to work on them even when you don’t have a pressing presentation coming up. If you wait for presentations to come up in class to start preparing and practicing, it will be substantially harder and scarier than if you find small ways to become a better speaker in your everyday life. I am a very anxious and quiet person, so getting up and talking in front of everyone is the last thing I want to do, but college is the perfect time to push yourself and get better at it.
For me, it has been very beneficial to seek out very minor, low-pressure ways to start talking more in front of people. The easiest way for me to do this has been to start participating more in classes. Especially if you have smaller classes, raising your hand to contribute your opinions and answer questions is a quick way to not only physically speak in front of others but also to build trust in yourself and develop your voice. Being able to articulate your thoughts to professors and peers on the spot is a great confidence boost, and if you have to present in that class down the line, it will be much less intimidating knowing you’ve spoken in front of these people a thousand times before.
practice
Though I’m sure this is the advice you’ve heard the most, I have to emphasize it. Teachers always tell you to practice prior to presentations, but it just seems so obvious that I never really took it seriously until I started doing it and saw how much of a difference it made. Practicing in front of other people is ideal, but if that is too intimidating of a starting point, I like to practice in front of a mirror. I hold my laptop in front of me so I can see the slides in the mirror, but I can’t read them.
This practice time is super important because it reveals what you truly know and where you have gaps in your understanding. Whenever I do this, I inevitably get to a slide that I have nothing to say about, and then I know where I need to go back and do more work. During this process, I like to focus on understanding rather than memorization. Memorizing creates unnecessary pressure, and you are more likely to mess up and stumble over your words if you are focused on reciting a script perfectly.
As I practice, I talk through my slides, workshopping different ways to explain them. As I practice again and again, I land on the explanation I like the most. The repetition and lack of notes while practicing help you drill the presentation and information into your brain, so the final presentation is just muscle memory.
take it slow
No matter how much you practice and prepare, there is no way to eliminate the stress you will feel in the moment, standing in front of an audience. To cope with the pressure, there are a few things I keep in mind while I actually present. The hardest thing for me is slowing down. I get up there and just want to spit out the information as quickly as possible to get it all over with, but this just makes everything worse. When you just slow down and take breaths throughout, you come off as more confident, and it’s easier to piece together your thoughts without tripping over your words.
Another great tip I have learned is that if you lose your thought or need a second to regroup, taking a pause is way better than using filler words such as “like” or “um” to fill the silence. If you pause for a few seconds, it may feel like a lifetime for you, but it is much less noticeable for the audience, and it paints you as composed rather than frantic.
My last piece of advice is to put thought into your body language and how you are presenting yourself. Since I get nervous presenting, I tend to fidget and shift my weight frequently, which is not a good look in front of an audience. Practicing your body language is just as important as practicing the content of your presentation, as they both affect your overall performance. Though it is uncomfortable, watching a video of yourself practicing can help you identify the small things you do that you may not even notice. The things that I need to focus on the most are my posture, keeping my feet planted, and being intentional with my hand motions.
Strive for progress, not perfection
My goal in writing this article is not to paint myself as the best public speaker who has all the answers, but rather to simply share advice that has helped me improve. By no means would I say that presenting is my favorite thing or frankly even one of my biggest strengths, but it is something I have significantly improved on from where I started. As scary and uncomfortable as it can be, it is an important skill, and you will only get better if you work at it, so I hope these strategies help you get started!