In this project, we learnt all about what crazy is, what it means to us, and why it takes a ‘crazy’ person to change the world. I found this entire project very interesting (and very eventful) so I think I’ll have a lot to talk about in this blog. Enjoy reading about this chaotic project from my perspective….
We presented our work in this project by using the presentation technique called a PechaKucha, which if you didn’t know is a 6-minute and 40-second long presentation. It works in a 20×20 format where you have 20 slides playing behind you but you can only talk for 20 seconds during each slide. Before our final presentation at the end of this project, we created our own mini PechaKucha. We started by choosing a famous ‘crazy’ person and I chose Bob Dylan. Here are the slides I put together and then presented:
I was surprisingly very happy with how this turned out. I say surprisingly because I was very worried when I first figured out what I had to do. I am not the best at memorizing lines but I enjoy public speaking so reading off a script is enjoyable to me. Although I like scripts, while doing a PechaKucha you are not allowed to use one for yourself, so I had to push myself out of my comfort zone. I ended up memorizing what I had to say, but a good public speaker does not memorize lines. A good speaker knows their material and what they want to talk about, then they just have a one-sided conversation with the audience. I did not have this realization until my final PechaKucha, but I’m glad I finally figured out how to do it in the end.
I had a lot of feedback after my presentation to create less crowded slides (I disagree but fine) and talk to my audience more without using a script (I did end up using key cards for this presentation, but I didn’t in my final presentation). I prefer more interesting-crowded-collage-like slides but many people say otherwise. I understand how it can be distracting so I do try to tone down my slides, but I also want to avoid making them boring! I hope my final PechaKucha slides were a perfect balance of interesting and simple.
The next step of this project after figuring out what a PechaKucha is, is figuring out what crazy means. We did a lot of research and small pieces of work on this but the main part was writing an essay! While most of the class was away in Seattle I stayed at school to write this essay, which I am quite proud of. I worked very hard with Susan and Kira and Mr May for a week in the library to come up with this essay!
I wrote about a ‘crazy’ person named Nardward. If you are interested in who this man is you could press the link and read the awful boring Wikipedia page about him. Orrrrr you could read my very intriguing and well-written essay about him down below!
Thank you for reading!! (If you read it…). That took a lot of revisions to get to and I’m quite happy with it. I had trouble starting to write at the start of the process but eventually, I got onto a roll. The last few days of writing this I suddenly found my rhythm and got very into writing it. I ended up having a lot of fun writing this and I hope you can see that in my work.
Eventually, it was time to start working on our final PechaKucha! I lucked out and got put in a group with Caden and Logan, who I knew I could communicate and work quite well with. I’m so glad my group consisted of people I knew well and were compatible with because I can imagine how hard this project could have been if I had a group with poor communication skills and dedication to the project. I want to give a shout out to my team and I hope they are proud of what we delivered on our PechaKucha night. I’m also proud of them for continuing to work with my perfectionist annoying nitpicky self without getting mad. I probably drove them insane (and the people around me) because I kept repeating my lines over and over and over again just to get as much practice as I could.
This relentless practice (although annoying) I think paid off in the end. I’m happy with how I presented and proud of myself. I think I spoke confidently and clearly which helped draw the audience’s attention towards me. Since my presentation was the very last one of the night, and I was the one speaking at the beginning/end I knew I had to go out with a bang. I tried my best to choose captivating words and phrases while also not being too wordy and talking for too long. I think my timing was pretty good and I ended strong.
In my next presentation, I plan on really hitting the mark about my topic. I mainly focused on how I was going to present, and the slides I was going to present, but not on what I was even talking about. Some of the feedback I got for my first mini PechaKucha was that although I spoke well, I was barely answering the driving question. In the future, I need to first really think about the angle I want to go at, the topic I’m doing, and what my answer is. Before I do anything else I need to write down the point I am getting across, and then focus on how I will get that point across.
Before I wrap up this blog, let’s look at some photos!
Here are some photos I took from our PechaKucha presentation night
Setting up the PLP room:
Pamphlets, I designed to hand out to our guests:
Mini rehearsal minutes before the doors opened:
The first official presentation of the night!
Presenter POV at the back, taken right before I presented:
And that’s about it! Thank you so much for reading my blog, I know I rambled a lot in this one. I truly feel like I learned a lot throughout this project, sometimes I might just say that but I genuinely took away a lot of new information from this that will help me in my next projects. I learnt all about how to write an essay, which in the end I’m very proud of. I also learnt how to properly present using slides to enhance my words not take away from them.
Then lastly I learnt to trust my group, this is a big one. I do not like working on group projects because I like making all the big decisions myself, I want to do the project my way so everything is how I like it. I do not like negotiating and compromising with people on who will do what work and how. Because of this I usually end up doing most of the work, that is how I prefer it but at the same time, it annoys me. Another reason I don’t like group work is because I feel like MY work isn’t fully seen and appreciated. If a group member does poorly that will reflect on the entire project, despite my efforts to make improvements and changes. This is all coming from my experiences and I do believe what I’ve said, but I also know that this is a bad mindset to have (especially being in a group work oriented-program). To create successful work I am proud of while in a group I need to work well with that group, and I need to trust them. Despite my opposing opinions my determination to do well hopefully outshines any resentment I have.
Throughout this project, I have had to let my group take hold of the wheel without me being a backseat driver. I trusted my group to learn their lines on their own and I could see they did when we practiced together. I also trusted them to help take over working on the slides when I needed it. I was very overwhelmed the day of the presentation because I was stressing about many different school assignments all at the same time, but I knew I’d be able to do it because my group had my back.
So once again thank you so much team for pulling through I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them! Bye for now