Presenting Letters of Note

Being someone who gets very nervous doing presentations, I loved experiencing the supportive environment of the class. It felt as though everyone was invested in each individual topic and gave general encouragement toward one another. Additionally, I found all the presentations to be incredibly educating. Many people chose to talk about popular writers I was somewhat familiar with but learned surprising things. Such include learning about Roald Dahl being a British spy through Rowan’s presentation or about John and Abigail Adams’ relationship being more friendship oriented through Sarah’s. 

This course in general has helped slowly rebuild my writing and public speaking skills that I felt I’ve lost throughout high school. I used to be a very good public speaker and surprisingly enjoyed it. Overtime, however, my skills somewhat deteriorated since it wasn’t something my high school teachers had us do very often. I’d love to continue improving my public speaking during the rest of this semester and my future years at Muhlenberg. For starters, I’ve often received the note to avoid saying “um” and “uh” too much. The issue, though, during my presentations, is no matter how calm I feel I still stutter and “um” between my sentences. I wonder if there are any good strategies that could help me from repeating such phrases so often.