I presented my senior sem to a packed house on Thursday afternoon. It was a phenomenal success!
On Thursday afternoon, I had the absolute thrill of presenting my senior seminar, “Comicking Depression: Shaping Depression Discourse Through Autobiographical Web Comics.” It was the last of 11 English senior sem presentations spread out over four nonconsecutive days, and I was so happy to be able to finish things out strongly.
Because this topic is so important to me, it was also important to me to invite as many people as possible. Including my 10 senior sem classmates and my professor, at least 40 people came! Some of them had even stayed from having seen the girl before me present her project about how nature writing has evolved (which was a cool presentation), which was a huge compliment to me.
Prior to presenting, I had practiced several times — to an audience of empty chairs. While this definitely helped me become more familiar with what I was going to say, practically shouting at chairs was not nearly as satisfying as talking to 40+ people. Throughout my presentation, it was clear that people were very interested in what I had to say and entertained by the comics that I chose to talk about — there were plenty of laughs.
Each senior sem wraps up with a Q&A session, and my Q&A session ended up lasting 10 minutes (about twice as long as the typical Q&A, but permissible because I was the last presenter). People asked some thoughtful, excellent questions, and I was able to give them some informative, honest answers.
Once I finished, I had about a dozen people come up to me and hug me because they were proud of me and glad to have seen me present. I also had people message me on Facebook to let me know that they appreciated the sincerity with which I presented and how effectively I was able to convey a large amount of material in layman’s terms in the span of a 20-minute presentation (which ultimately lasted more than half an hour when so many people asked questions).
To have such turnout and support as I presented the project I’ve been working on for more than a semester was such a gift. To have been able to present so successfully to so many people made me feel like I was on top of the world!
Leave a Reply