It’s been busy (Ha! I just typed “busty”. Tits everywhere!) around here lately, primarily because my class is wrapping up for the semester. I had my group presentation last night, my 5-pages-minimum-with-sources “midterm” essay is due on Wednesday, my final project presentation is due this coming Monday, and my 10-pages-minimum-with-sources final project is due by the 2nd of July.
Or, at least that’s how it was supposed to have happened.
At the beginning of the semester we were broken into groups based on what topic we wanted to present about, and our group was the biggest at 5 people. We were told that we’d have 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours to present, and that we’d need time left over for questions. So we quickly divided 90 minutes by 5 people and came up with 18 minutes per person. That would leave plenty of time for Q&A at the end, and we’d all do an equal amount of presenting.
So I spent the last week and a half working on my presentation. I was making sure my slides were relevant, practicing my timing, making sure that I was right around 18 minutes. I even planned for dropping some stuff if time was short and had some anecdotes ready if we needed to stretch it out a bit.
When the first person in our group spoke for 30 minutes and read each word on every slide, I was a bit miffed but figured that everyone else would make up for it. When the second person in our group spoke for 30 minutes and read every word on every slide, I was starting to get frustrated. When the third person in our group spoke for 45 minutes and brought up every tangent known to humanity, I wanted to punch myself in the face and flip the fucking desk over. When the fourth presenter promised he could do a quick summary in 5 minutes and then used the remaining 20, all the while talking about EVERYTHING in my part of the presentation, I damn near exploded with rage.
Now I have to re-frame every theme in my presentation so that it doesn’t look like we had two duplicate conclusions, and I have to do it while I’m supposed to be working on my fucking midterm.
Seriously, everyone who has presented in my class so far has been horrible at it. Everyone reads off their fucking slides! It makes me want to stab faces! If you are reading off your fucking powerpoint slides you are an idiot and you are wasting everyone’s time and you should dunk yourself in gravy and go play with the lions at the zoo. Either shut your stupid fucking mouth and let the audience read your presentation because you’ve just rendered yourself a stupid sack of meat worth nothing more than the thumb it takes you to advance your slides, or don’t read off your fucking slides you cockthirsty shitfucker! Take an extra THREE FUCKING MINUTES and create a presentation that doesn’t make me want to tear out your eyeballs and skullfuck your screaming face. You know what? Nevermind. Don’t even use powerpoint because you’re just going to fuck it up anyway and end up looking like a retard again and wasting everyone’s time. You’re not allowed to use powerpoint anymore, dumbfuckers.
Here’s an example of a really good powerpoint presentation. Notice that Mr. Lessing doesn’t read EVERY FUCKING SLIDE or FILL THE FUCKING SLIDES WITH A BUNCH OF USELESS SHIT and STUPID FUCKING ANIMATIONS.
What the eff is the professor doing to regulate these people? AND - there is one simple and easy way to stop your partners from going over in time. Give a little whistle when they are close to the 18 minute mark. THe second they go over, walk up and punch them in the throat. THey will stop talking and the next person can go. And for the asshole that did your part of the project - I’m thinking that person gets their car blown up in the parking lot or a dead horse head in their bed. I really have to stop watching gangster movies before bedtime.
I had people like that in my courses, except that their problem wasn’t taking up too much time — rather they packed their slide with three or four paragraphs of text and sped through it like some meth addict. These people condensed 300-page theory books into 5 minutes of talking, leaving me with the task of filling up the remaining hour with relevant information. Dirty fucks. Also, you’d like Peter Norvig’s recreation of the Gettysburg Address in powerpoint.
I can’t help but agree with you; a well-delivered presentation is losing ground as a popular skill. Regardless, I think the real issue here is that I don’t see the word “skullfuck” nearly as often as I should. Thank you for that.
“cockthirsty shitfucker” HAHAHA! That makes me think of the old standard “sperm burping whore”.
What was it you were talking about again?
My biggest pet peeve about my schooling combining the artists with the museum studies people in seminars was that the we artists were always better at presenting our research. And we’re supposed to be the slack-jawed bumbling fools! All of the museum ladies read straight from their slides, some not even working in oral syntax to go from bullet to bullet, just speaking in terrible phrases, or reading off numbers from their obvious pie charts. what the hell! I just never understood how this small sector of the museum field, a field where you are always presenting material, didn’t know how to properly present. While we artists, the people who are allowed to wear black at all times, chain smoke, and generally be inarticulate douchebags, had great flow with our presentations.
In short, don’t read to me when your slides are already up on the screen!
(p.s. looking forward to seeing you guys Saturday! should I bring anything?)
OH OH, and were there SOUND EFFECTS indicating the change in slides? BOY I love hearing a “zoom” or a “digital sprinkle” in professional presentations. LOVE IT.
Man, ACW, I can feel the love!
I agree with you though, I want to join you in face stabbing when my trainers at work read off their goddamn slides. Especially when they’re doing the power point presentation of how to give a good power point presentation.
I’ve seen my share of bad PowerPoint presentations. Come to think of it, almost all of them were painful drudgery.
In my job - most people just read off powerpoint presentations. And it seems the “higher” up in the company, the worse it is!
I’ve had to sit on numerous conference calls (which are a waste of time anyways because no one is paying attention and you can just email out info) and stare at a powerpoint presentation while the “presenter” read it word for word - slide by slide. And if people actually ask questions, the “presenter” just refers them back to powerpoint, or they don’t know and have to follow up a week later.
Those students are doing exactly what I see in my business world. And it sux even more in business because you have no choice but to actually pay a little bit of attention, for that 1 sentence that you actually need to hear.
Refer to my post from earlier in the month for comic relief on this issue.
http://broad-sheet.blogspot.com/2007/06/perils-of-power...
Whatever happened to the good old days when people would read off of chalkboards and overhead transparencies?
Where I work, all new salaried hires are required to attend a year long leadership development farce. Last week was presentation skills day, so we were told to have a 5-10 minute presentation ready. Of course, I did mine using Powerpoint. In fact, it was so Powerpoint involved that when they told us at the last minute we couldn’t use PP, I had to present on an entirely different topic that I was pulled out of my ass. Good times.
I can’t stand Powerpoint. Some of my entry-level professors read off the slides. At several hundred dollars a credit-hour, that *really* pissed me off. These days when I’m forced to do a presentation, my slides are extremely vague. I use the slides as if they were notecards; I speak and elaborate to the points, and if people want to take notes on based on my delivery so much the better.
My slides are always quite dull. White background. No themes. I couldn’t program an effect if my life depended on it.
I love your rage. It reminds me of when I am driving.
Oh. My. God.
This is exactly what I went through yesterday during a training session. The only saving grace is that there wasn’t too much of the special effects that they’re doing because they look cool, not because they actually enhance the presentation in any way. And there was no artwork whatsoever, which meant no animated GIFs that would repeat their action overandoverandoverandovermakeitSTOPSTOPSTOPGODDAMMIT I CAN’T CONCENTRATE ON ANYTHING!!!
I have my students do PPTs and I insist that they NOT put their presentation on the slides word for word, and if they read from the slides they get a lower grade. I demonstrate what it means to use key words and tell them the PPT should be the skeleton, they need to flesh it out for the presentation to make sense - and about half of them STILL plod through their slides word for word.
People are morons.
Hate that crap.
I really hate when they use the same annoying “swoosh” or “ding” at every single slide.
I can read. I don’t need them to read to me.
*doh* I was the anonymous poster. And @ Caroline - I agree completely with “People are morons”.
Group projects + powerpoint presentations = my own personal hell
Sounds to me like the teacher isn’t doing his/her job.
Ugh, I gave THE WORST presentation about six weeks ago for my computer graphics class. I’m talking bad by socially awkward, cant-get-laid-for-crap standards. I would’ve been grateful for the opportunity to not get in front of everyone and suck
I actually did a presentation with a group that turned out that way back in grad school. I seriously wanted to pummel their sorry, no-talent asses. The next time there was a group presentation, I not only did the power point for the whole presentation, I made sure I spoke first. I graduated with a 4.0.
i feel your pain, i too, must present in power point for my management class.
so tired of readers. what happened to key points ?!
I always pictured you as busty. It’s gotten me through many a lonely night.