On the 31st of March, three other GP students and I made a presentation to advertise our group at the guidance session for freshmen, which was such a great experience for me. We got ten minutes for the presentation and yes, it was only ten minutes which is not long. However, we were not allowed much time for preparation and I was feeling super nervous before starting! In my mind, the same sentences kept on coming and going; "So many people...! How will this presentation go...? ahhh I can feel the heat surrounding me... nawww..." But, I tried my best to pretend to be fine and went on to the stage. Now I could not escape from there so I made up my mind and finally started speaking in front of all those many young students and professors. There was actually one thing which was pretty funny and freaked us out at the same time; it was the darkness in the room and the act that we could not see our script well. To be honest, none of us could foresee that and perhaps we should have but we did know that we were to use PowerPoint for the presentation. Having no time to panic, I bravely decided to forget the brief script I had prepared for myself and spoke in English freely. By the end of my speech my voice was shaking because of how nervous I was. I still wonder how many people noticed my nervousness, such an embarrassment. This opportunity of giving a presentation to a lot of people was a huge challenge for me and provided me a valuable chance to improve myself. Also, I reconsidered how important it is to try to use my own words and to talk to the audience instead of reading a script when you really want to communicate with them. I seriously believe I got this feeling by hearing the great applause from the audience that day. "We made it!"

by Maiko K