A Week of Presentations

This week in Writing 39C, we were assigned to one of six Time articles about animal behavior. My group had to read and present an article on the social behaviors of animals, specifically their social organization, hunting and foraging habits, and their reproductive behaviors. I actually liked our topic because I found the article extremely interesting and I thought its content was relevant to what I studied in Biology 94 class last quarter.

There were some issues when making the presentation with my group. Since we had to collaborate outside of class, it was difficult to ommunicate and find time that would work for everyone else in the group. At the end, we solved our problem by text messaging, using a group Skype chat, and splitting up the work.

When my group presented our draft to the rest class on Monday, I felt completely unprepared and nervous. Although I had read the article at least 3 times, I felt like I had forgotten everything the moment I got up to the front of the class. My fear of public speaking kicked in and I had forgotten all my main points I was going to say. After the presentation on Monday, my group worked on improving the weakensses of our presentation. We limited our image usage to one picture per slide, reduced the amount of text to avoid over cluttering the slides, and moved our slides on scholar references to relevant sections of the presentation. After dividing the slides among the three of us, I spent about 30 minutes to an hour rehearsing my part so that I would feel more prepared. Although my group didn't get the chance to present on Wednesday, I still feel confident in myself for the parts I am presenting tomorrow (Monday).

Aside from the presentations, we were also assigned to link and Tweet three sources to Twitter and Delicious. I chose to tweet 2 articles I had previously read on Reddit, and a TED Talk I had previously watched. One of the articles I had linked was about what the statement, "No animals were harmed," means in movies. When people think of animal abuse, they think about how they are mistreated by their owners in their homes. This articles states that animals are also abused in the movie industry, even when the act is not shown on the big screen. It shows that animal abuse could be hidden behind flase claims and could occur in places we wouldn't expect it to. I thought it would be something interesting my classmates or I could research about.