My self esteem with my speaking skills isn't the highest thing in the world, and this was one of the main reasons for this fear. I didn't feel confident speaking fluent English in front of people because I was sure that I would be making mistakes, but this is when I realized it all depended on PRACTICE. In order to speak a more fluent English what I needed was to speak more of it. I rehearsed a very adaptable script at least twice a day for a week, and it helped me make my presentation more fluent. I then got worried that it would be memorizing, but I saw a difference in class as well. Not only was I speaking my presentation in a more fluent and confident manner, but I also found myself speaking up in class with an improved English. |
I wasn't 100% sure that I had faced the fear of speaking in front of an audience until after my Presentation of Learning. I would have never thought that I'd actually find myself saying "I want to do it all over again". Every single part of the process made me grow in many different ways. PRACTICE makes PERFECT. Something I also did that helped me face this fear was making sure that my visuals guided what I was speaking about in an effective manner so I'd feel confident speaking at all times. I would read through my outline and add any necessary visuals (not too overwhelming) to make my presentation more visually appealing, and so it would guide me better. Thanks to the amount of effort I put into preparing and practicing my delivery of the message in the POL, I managed to present with an engaging tone and a clear voice, in which I actually felt proud. I thought that after finishing the presentation I would be relieved that I got it over with, but I actually sat down, thought about all that I did well and all that I didn't , and I wanted to do it all over again. I wanted to present again, taking all the feedback that my classmates gave me into consideration.
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This week I was able to presence what success actually felt like. We were selling the copies of Breakthrough magazine in the morning, and honestly, I wasn't quite sure how many people would be interested in buying a magazine made by tenth graders. I was definitely wrong. People would actually stop and ask who made the magazine, assuming it was made by someone more professional, and they'd be impressed to find out it was all us. One semester's hard work has paid off. Observing how amazed every one was with our product, and how many people were actually paying 15 soles for it, made me proud. Proud of our hard work, dedication, and passion. Without these, none of it would've been possible. I began to look back to the first days of making this magazine, when all of us had our doubts that we'd be successful, thinking a magazine that actually looked professional was almost impossible, but we overcame that. We overcame the fact that we had no knowledge whatsoever on magazines, writing business articles, taking professional pictures, using Adobe InDesign, filming documentaries. It was all NEW TO US. But we were passionate and dedicated, and actually managed to become professionals at all of these. I thought I knew what success felt like before, but after finishing this magazine, I knew I was wrong all along.
I thought I had my outline for the POL all crafted out and that I wouldn't get any new ideas, but one can never run out of ideas. For the learning section, I began to replay the entire semester in my mind to make sure I wasn't missing out anything important, which is when I made the realization about the DOMINO EFFECT
That's what the domino effect is about--one falls and they all fall with you. In my case, this drives motivation because even though you know that mistakes will be made, you try your best to get things done on time, at the least. Something else about working as a team is that I begin to not only worry about my own work, but of every member's as well, which stretches my discipline. I have begun to see that as the actual beauty of TEAMWORK. It makes one more committed in whatever they do, because it's no longer something independent; fail and everyone pays the price. This is something I began to like about teamwork: since we are all destined to fail, because it's the only way to learn, members of a team tend to become more flexible when their group members fail as the time goes by. With many mistakes from different members, they start to become part of the process, and we begin to prepare for mistakes, rather than avoid them.
One of the strengths in my Growth Chart was my ability to adapt to new technology, but there was much more to to this than it seemed. For the POL, we have to learn how to use KeyNote and Photoshop--two programs I had never used in my life. During all our school years we have been staying in our comfort zones when it comes to technology. It was as simple as that. We were taught these programs in elementary, and we were still using them up until now. I might have the ability to adapt to new technology; when new programs are introduced to me I have no trouble learning to manage them. The difference is, have I chosen to learn these programs, or was it because they were my only choice? The reason I chose Premiere to create the Breakthrough documentary was because they told me to, because it was the best program for our needed purposes. After learning how to use it, I might actually begin to stick to it, but that's the problem. Sticking to the same technology. That same technology that you are comfortable with. This is where the hard part comes in. The part where you need to begin taking initiative, you need to learn about new programs,
How can you learn new things if you're sticking solely to what you already know, to what you feel safe with? This limits us so much as learners and as human beings because without realizing it, we are turning our mindset into a fixed one that is only allowed to hear what they want to hear. We've always been told to step out of our comfort zone, but to me, this seemed pretty self-explanatory: do what you're afraid to do. That sentence is true, but I've learned that there is so much more to the idea than just taking risks; it's all a matter of the way in which you think, and how willing you are to learn.
I don’t have experience speaking in front of an audience im not necessarily comfortable with.
What in the world was i going to talk about?
I concluded that within these months of school, alongside all the many things i’ve learned… I have actually learned how to learn. Learning to me, used to be just sitting in a classroom, waiting for the teacher to show us something new, taking notes, and trying to remember for the test that’ll come up. Notice how I mentioned trying to remember, because of course, someone would ask me a couple months later about that previous topic that I had supposedly learned, and I'd barely remember. I hadn’t really figured the reason behind this, until this school year. “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I will learn.” -Benjamin Franklin This quote defines each and every single thought that’s been racing through my head recently. Involving yourself, and doing things, is the most effective way to learn. So, actually being passionate about the topic that you are learning definitely helps it never leave your head, but anyhow, involvement in anything at all will provide you knowledge. It’s the only actual way you gain the experience entirely, so from this, the learning does’t leave your head. A couple years from now, when I look back to remember my school years, I will no longer talk about just “something i was taught in school”, but it’ll become “something that i did in school”.
For IBG, we discussed for a long time about how we would be making our experience so much better if we'd gain EXPERTISE on our topics before actually doing the project. Since the beginning of the semester, I wanted to do something related to marketing, and we marketed Collette, which actually became very successful thanks to us. The problem was, we hadn't the least idea about what marketing was actually about. We knew no concepts about marketing, no techniques--all we used was our basic knowledge on what we thought the audience would like. To our luck it worked, but evidently this won't work always.
TURNING STRANGERS INTO FRIENDS, AND FRIENDS INTO CUSTOMERS This phrase really stuck to me as I read it on the cover. It made me actually see that the best way to make people want to buy your things is by becoming their friends, showing them how interested you are in helping them, in facilitating their lives. Something I read in the beginning of the book really stuck to me: “Paying attention” to something—anything—is, in fact, a conscious act requiring conscious effort. It is actually harder than it appears to everyone, to make people want to pay attention to your product. I learned that it actually starts with a STRONG, but concise first impression, to make your audience want to continue paying attention. Having a targeted customer is ESSENTIAL, because this way you make sure that they collaborate with you, and if this is done correctly it's likely that they will remain loyal to you instead of going for any competitors you have. We, today, live in a networked world. This wasn't true in the past years, but now for people to market and advertise, they can take advantage of this reality. I hadn't realized how helpful living in this new, networked world, can be until writing our articles for Breakthrough because of all the contacts we found. This really impressed me, and now, reading it only in the introduction of this book, only made their importance clearer. Though I didn't go past the introduction, because reading this book will be during IBG time, I really got an idea of what the marketing of tomorrow is all about. I can't wait to actually see all that is behind PERMISSION MARKETING, and finally be able to market a company professionally for my interest based group.
Since my previous post about being a united class, I have to admit that I've begun seeing a drastic change within our environment, and I believe the cause of this has been that we are all striving towards a COMMON GOAL.
Now we are growing as a company, not as just a regular class, and having an organization like ours has its perks. In Breakthrough magazine, we work as a flat organization, meaning that there is no hierarchy. We have learned not to see anyone as superior or inferior; we see each other as associates. We might have a CEO, CMO, CFO or other titles, but each and every one of us is seen as equals. A hardworking team, striving to create a professional magazine about GREAT ORGANIZATIONS, and I would have to say that this working method has done much more than teach us about the organizations. We have learned how to work as a large group, which is something we haven't been used to doing in our MYP years, and we are managing perfectly fine. New programs are being taken in hand for the magazine and we are managing this effectively. These are just a couple of the many things we have been practicing and learning recently. Clearly every member of the class is equally motivated because if not, all these accomplishments wouldn't have occurred at all.
HOW WELL DO YOU MANAGE YOUR TIME AS A PERSON IN GENERAL?
STRESS. The worst nightmare of any student, especially when university gets closer. In my case, I can never succeed in my work under a stressed environment, or a stressed mind. I was thinking this week, and I couldn't recall when was the last time that I felt very stressed. This was the moment when I realized how crucial time-management was, because ever since I learned to balance it correctly, I barely felt stressed. The procrastinators would always be the ones who stressed the most over their tasks, and it makes total sense. PROCRASTINATION IS STRESS' BEST FRIEND
We might think that we know ourselves more than anyone else, which is partially true, but there is much more to this idea.
This discussion changed my entire mindset, and we found a way to do crowd-source grading in a way that we all felt comfortable. The main reason why most people didn't want to grade each other was because of a trust issue. At least we thought so. We thought that we couldn't trust each other enough to give our peers feedback on their performance in class, when what was really happening was that we didn't know each other enough to judge one another on our work. I realized that I didn't feel comfortable grading a classmate on reading skills, when I actually the faintest idea on how adaptable they were as readers. This is why we ended up dividing in small groups with people we know well, and would give each other the grades we thought they deserved. I have to admit that this process we came up with for grading worked exceptionally. I was satisfied because we managed to be direct and honest; no group member wanted to give themselves a grade they didn't truly deserve.
After our visit to Alicorp, I realized how much hands-on projects can show you. All our lives we have been mostly used to getting our information with online research or books, with some exceptions, but I had never felt this way before. By actually going to seek for your information out in the real world, you are learning so much more than you could ever do through reading online research. The main reason for this, is because when interviewing people, or visiting places, you can ask specific questions to find the exact answers you need, which is something that isn´t too often achieved through old-fashioned research. Chiara and I had so much questions about Alicorp that we needed for the article, but no matter how hard we would search, nothing came up. When we met with the director of Alicorp, he could not have helped us more; he even set us a date to visit the actual factory to have a close insight on how they actually work. “We create leading brands that transform markets creating extraordinary experiences for our consumers. We are in constant motion, looking to innovate and create value for welfare in society” -Alicorp´s Mission
The criteria we set during the beginning of the project for what makes a good article really stuck to us during this research process. We wanted to avoid not following these as much as possible, which is why this new way of researching was of great use for us. This was when I realized that there was way much more to the IA standard for project-based learning; the difference was more than evident. Instead of seeing Alicorp through all the outside perspectives, we were allowed a different point of view which was a tremendous difference.
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Camila BustamanteClass of 2017 Archives
May 2015
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