I will mark this day on my calendar. Today I experienced perhaps one of the most humiliating moments of my life — and I did so before an audience of my peers.

However, in every experience, whether good or bad, there are lessons to be learned. I learned more than my share tonight.

Before I dive headlong into my rant, let me set the stage for you.

I struggled through this course, mainly because of our team’s inability to, well, be a “team.” Two of the four teammates were not responsive at all and barely put in a good 10 minutes worth of effort into our group assignments and final project. To make matters worse, the two had not prepared anything for the presentation and had not given me any feedback on the PowerPoint slides that I sent to everyone well in advance.

The first thing one of them asked me was whether I had print-outs of the slides. Hel-LO. I am not your mother. You had a soft copy of the file, why didn’t you print them out yourself? I bit my tongue. Instead, I said, “I only have my copy,” holding up my neatly stapled set. I slid it over to him, already feeling more than a tinge of irritation.

He and the other guy scrutinized it as if it was the first time they were seeing it. I believe it probably was.

Getting nervous now, I asked the guy, “So… you are doing the conclusion, right?”

He looked at the slides and said, “there’s no slide for it.”

Appalled, I said, “I didn’t get anything from you to add to it.” I had given them more than enough time and opportunities to add or make changes to the PowerPoint. In fact, when I had solicited for content, the two of them did not respond at all — so I took it upon myself to populate their portions with a few bullets taken from our paper.

Since we were on break and half of the class was still at the vending machines buying their sodas, probably looking more annoyed than I wished to convey, I offered, “I can add a slide with a few bullets right now, if you want.”

“Yeah, otherwise, I’m gonna have to read right from the paper. Do you have the paper?” He had the tone of someone who had expected something. Expected me to think for him. Expected me to hold his hand and do everything for him. As if his mere presence was effort enough to earn him full credit on this project that he had barely contributed to.

Good heavens. I passed him a printed copy of our paper.

“Okay, what do you want to add?” I asked as I loaded the PowerPoint file on the presentation computer.

“Whatever.”

I looked at him and waited for him to give me his bullet points. After all, he was the one presenting the content. I would hope that he would’ve had at least a vague idea of what he was going to say.

Nada.

“Whatever you put up there is fine. I’m just gonna wing it.”

Wing it? You idiot, I’m gonna wing your neck pretty soon.

By this time, I was livid. I pulled three bullet points, basically B.S., out of my butt thin air. He was still seated, not making any effort to come over to the computer to help me come up with ideas. I mean, geez, could you at least pretend to care?

“Do you want to look at this??” I asked.

He slowly stood and looked at what I had typed for all of five seconds and sat back down.

By now, I was upset. It was the culmination of five weeks of frustration. While the exchange was not overtly confrontational or hostile, his display of apathy and disregard for the clear disparity of effort was a total slap in the face. A few moments later, the class was back and we were on.

I couldn’t focus. My mind drew a complete blank. I tried to speak, but I could barely formulate a coherent sentence. I was supposed to be doing the introduction, but all I was doing was fumbling for the right word and saying a lot of “umm’s” and “uhh’s.” I believe I experienced a complete meltdown right there in front of the entire class. I ended up reading the bullet points on the slides and quickly handing it off to the next presenter: the other “over-achiever” in the group, the savior of our presentation.

I had to present my portion again about midway through. It started out okay, but quickly degenerated into an incomprehensible mess. The only thing that I didn’t do was physically fall on my face. Perhaps if I wasn’t riveted to my spot, I might have. Again, fell back to reading the bullet points on the screen and handed it off.

I’m sure it was painful to watch.

It was the worst night of my college career. I allowed my emotions to cloud my thinking and affect my performance. I felt horrible, mainly because I wanted to do a decent job for the other teammate who actually carried most of the workload. I hoped that the instructor would not hold my poor performance against him. Aside from being incredibly embarrassed, I was disappointed in myself. Although I don’t consider myself to be the most eloquent speaker, I do technical training at work. I should have been able to recover and continue. Instead, I stood there fumbling like an idiot. My only reprieve was that the torture would soon be over.

And now, on to the lessons I learned. There has to be something positive gained from such an awful experience, right?

• Not everyone will be as motivated as I expect them to be. Some people will not take the initiative to do anything. For those people, perhaps a little more hand-holding is required. Perhaps they needed more direction. Not everyone is a self-starter.
• When I get flustered just prior to a presentation, take a moment to step outside, take a deep breath and clear my mind. It could mean the difference between a good presentation — and one that makes me want to bludgeon myself with a blunt object.
• Something I learned about myself today: I am no good if I am emotional. Sometimes a disconnect is needed. I shouldn’t take things so seriously and/or personally.
• Embarrassment is temporary. Even the most dreadful of experiences, though they seem like eternities, are quickly forgotten. I’m sure no one in my class will remember my bumbling presentation a week from now.

Now that I got my nervous breakdown out of the way, maybe I can survive my last 4 scheduled classes unscathed. However, if I have teammates like that again, I may need to acquire a taste of alcohol. It would definitely drive me to drink.

All I can say is, thank God this class is over.

Trackback URI |