A few years later, I hope to look back on today and think that even though I screwed up, at least it woke me up and gave me an added impetus to work even harder both at work and in school.

In a nutshell, I bombed a presentation. And that's a horrible feeling to have when you know you had underperformed in front of your peers (who are outwardly showing signs of sympathy and empathy but probably sneering within) and made a complete and utter fool of yourself.

It doesn't take a fool to work out how retarded your presentation was when the chairperson of the meeting did not bother to ask you any questions and proceeded to sum up everyone's presentations with a common thread or theme about blah blah blah. Oh wait, everyone except yours. That's right, he thought your presentation was so rubbish that he did not even include it in his summation notes.

Here are some things that you should not do in order to avoid a similar fate -

1. NEVER GO IN WITHOUT A SCRIPT

I was perhaps too confident in my abilities to improvise on the spot - but trust me, that's not a wise move when you're presenting on really serious stuff to someone who, well, knows his stuff and can detect bullshit and smoke from a mile away. Hence, you should always have a script. Even if you are reading off it (blatantly), at least it beats stammering at the wrong time and repeating 'actually' so many times that it (actually) makes your audience cringe.

2. ALWAYS KNOW THE PROPER SLIDE TEMPLATE

Perhaps it was the 2 years of army that somehow conveniently forgot to structure my slides according to the standard template. And by that I meant the agenda, learning points, processes, chains of thought etc etc - which leads to me having to spine on which to base my presentation on. What's the point of having so many content slides when your audience can't link them to any theme? And having graphics or shapes to aid your explanation of concepts help too (Arrows to represent processes, Venn diagrams to represent relationships and convergence, so on).

3. DO NOT BE OVERCONFIDENT AND SET YOUR STANDARDS OR EXPECTATIONS TOO HIGH

I should clarify - You can set your standards high, but make sure you put in the corresponding amount of effort needed to reach your goal as well! In the words of the chairperson, "Nervousness will always be there (when you present). You should be afraid of the day when you do not feel nervous before a presentation for that is when you are actually complacent."

Having pegged my expectations too high, and made many errors along the way, I was brought crashing back to earth at the end of the day. People who are close to me will know that I heaped tonnes of added expectations on myself for a very unique reason (for obvious reasons I will not disclose).

All I can say is that I had imagined myself to be on par with the very best prior to this, only for my folly and rustiness (I had not made a formal presentation in more than three years, and came in with a half-cooked script and minimal preparation - a result of possessing an unproductive mind) to prove my undoing.

I have gotten the perfect slide template for any presentation imho (thank you!), and this whole unfortunate experience will only serve to galvanise my wounded ego and self-esteem to come up with the appropriate (positive) backlash. I hope you will not pity me for being so pathetic and sputtering like a machine gun in a accent gone awry due to my nervousness, and indeed look beyond this episode in your impressions of me.

I pray. Fingers crossed.

I hope I will be able to read this post again in a few years, and smile. For I would then have conquered my fears, and know that I had done the best I could in the intervening years.

*Post typed in the company of Jim Bean* Cheers.

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