Crafting a Presentation

The first week of my internship wasn’t really. All of the office was out for an annual retreat and the interns had full control and responsibility of the office. Luckily, there weren’t many families visiting any of those days. My training began immediately, though we didn’t really begin until the full time staff were back in the office the next week. Since I have worked in the office in a different role for a while now, a lot of the small stuff I already knew how to do. There was a large part of my training, however, that was very new and would take a lot of thought and creativity. My task was to begin to craft my own version of the information session given to families that visit the Office of Admission. There are a lot of points that we have to hit, but we are also supposed to make it our own through the stories that we tell. We were supposed to have the first half of the presentation done by the end of the first week the full time staff had returned. We would then present to out supervisor and a few others to get feedback about what was good and what could be improved upon. Then, we were to learn about the second half of the presentation and be ready to give the entire thing to a lot of out admissions staff the following week.

I began by making an outline of the first half of my presentation: trying to weave together the information with my personal stories. I gave the first half of the presentation to my supervisor and two other people. I was a bit nervous, but it went pretty well. We learned about the next half over lunch the next week and began working on the outline for that.

After I finished the outline, I began to practice the final product, trying to hit a thirty minute time limit. When I practiced the entirety I was getting 25 minutes, which wasn’t too far off. This past Friday was my time to give the presentation and I was surprisingly very nervous, more so than the first time. I gave it though and it went pretty smoothly. We just have to give it one more time before we are cleared to present to families.

Once I am able to present to families, my personal presentation will be helpful to the organization as a whole. I will be the first bit of in-person information that a lot of the visiting families will encounter. Therefore, my role will be quite important in the impression that the families have of their visit.