How to relax before and during my IOP?

[thesunsetglow]

My IOP is on Tuesday! I procrastinated a little too much, I'm ashamed to say, and ended up writing the whole thing Friday night, and have rehearsed it maybe 6 or 7 times? I'm confident in my material (I'm doing mine on the structure of shame in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and Equus by Peter Shaffer), though I'm definitely going to practice more tonight and tomorrow, as much as I can! My presentation is basically entirely thematic so the only visuals I have are a movie clip at the beginning (a scene from The Birds by Hitchcock where a man has his eyes pecked out) and then just rolling pictures of various scenes from each play. I've practiced in front of my parents and my friends, and I've done fine, but I'm terrified that as soon as I get up in front of my class of 35-odd people that I'll go into a panic and jumble all my words, and forget everything. I do have cue cards, but they have limited information on them - I don't want to get up there and be reading! My presentation is also quite long - it takes up most of the 15 minutes!

So I'm just wondering how everyone else calmed themselves down right before they got up in front of everyone and started their presentation? I don't want to blank out or run out of time or anything, I'm getting extremely nervous about all of this. Any suggestions that will help me out would be fantastic! Thank you so much!

[ShineeLikeMe]

BREAAATHHHHHHH. Count your breaths too (1,2,3,4,5,6,7 in 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 out). Slow your heart rate and just think, as soon as you get it over with, youre done.

And imagine them in their underwear

[Austin Glau]

haha yeah i agree with the poster above me, except for the underwear part.

What i did is just practice a lot, and practice even when other people are going. if you practice it leaves less time for tense stress and anxiety. During the IOP I always have problems shaking, but i just continue on, if you don't make it a point, nowone notices

[Drake Glau]

Isn't it only to one person? And your teacher at that. For once in your school life look at them and mentally call them idiots who have no idea what this work is even about and you have to explain it all to them. Helps you point out the obvious stuff that you think you imply, but this actually gets you the points where implying that the grader understands won't.

[thesunsetglow]

No, the IOP is to my entire class, the IOC is to just the teacher... I'll be considerably less stressed out for that one!

Another source of my stress is that my topic takes up most of the 15 minutes to talk about... the few other people that have already gone only talked for maybe 8 or 10 minutes... I'm nervous because mine fills up so much time!!

[Austin Glau]

Drake, sometimes it is in front of the class. thats how my teacher did it.

[Drake Glau]

Don't feel nervous about that, feel confident and trust me, when you get up there and your words begin to be cranked out around mach 5, your's won't be 15minutes

Entire class...hmmm...stare at em all with a very arrogant mindset and know that your argument easily blows theres out of the water.

Edited October 25, 2010 by Drake

[thesunsetglow]

Hahaha well I'll have an easy time with the arrogance thing! The first two girls that went kind of made a total mess of their presentations... The first girl finished talking in the first five minutes and answered questions for ten! The second one got to about 8 minutes and then went back and started her presentation over!

[JoeG]

No, the IOP is to my entire class, the IOC is to just the teacher... I'll be considerably less stressed out for that one!

Another source of my stress is that my topic takes up most of the 15 minutes to talk about... the few other people that have already gone only talked for maybe 8 or 10 minutes... I'm nervous because mine fills up so much time!!

I'm actually the complete opposite lol. This is since I can plan out my IOP, while I don't have as much opportunity for that for the IOC.

A word of advice I have is (definitely BEFORE your speech lol) to look at your note-card prompts, and then mentally recite the major points of your speech, as you would say them aloud. Try to do this while looking at your notecard as little as possible. Despite my warning, this may help you out during your speech. Memory is a subjective thing.

This method works wonders for me, as it helps instill confidence in my memory, and in my work. Once I know that I know what I'm going to say, I usually lower my panic level to a tolerable state lol.

When I did my IOP back in January, I had similar concerns to the time limit, as I was also nearing 15 minutes in my practice sessions. When I actually did my speech, I ended up going for about 13 minutes. Although, I didn't use video's as my visual, I used a posterboard with images of my major points. Don't worry, your use of video's is a good idea.

[Hesus]

My IOP outline is due on Monday next week (1st of November) and I'm stressing about it. I'm planning on doing a dramatic monologue and want to do a re-write performance of the final words of Ovid in the book "An Imaginary Life" by David Malouf but I don't feel like I know about what I should be doing. If anyone has any ideas for how I can make my presentation successful and where I should start or even any tips on the presentation and doing it with a dramatic monologue I would be very grateful because my teacher hasn't really told us much about what we have to.

Thanks,

If you're interested my subjects are:

Biology (SL)

History (HL)

English A1 (HL)

Spanish Ab initio

Maths Studies

Theatre (HL)

TOK

[thesunsetglow]

PHEW!! Well at least I'm not the only one who's nearing 15 minutes in practice! I was terrified that I was going to go over and not have time to finish! I just finished rehearsing for about the 7th time and I got it down to 13 minutes! Hopefully that will be consistent in the next 20 practices I'm planning on doing tonight haha! And thank you, regarding the visuals! Since Im doing a strictly thematic presentation, I really had no idea how to "engage the audience" or make it interesting, aside from that! Before today, I had only the video clip as a visual and my boyfriend told me it was boring when I tried to do a run through in front of him haha! Hopefully this makes it a little less boring

Edited October 25, 2010 by thesunsetglow

[Drake Glau]

Video and visuals, ugh, my entire class jut got up there and spoke for 10min lol...I hate how my school works though especially with this. 10th grade, before IB starts, most students get crap teachers who still have students summarize, well IB doesnt like that. So, in 2 months most of us had to learn how to analyze and write a literary analysis paper and then present for 10min. Pretty sure one girl just broke down and cried for 10min while another person went =/

Is your BF in IB? Because any presentation over the subtle themes and whatnot about some random book probably isn't too interesting to most other students

Edited October 25, 2010 by Drake

[thesunsetglow]

Video and visuals, ugh, my entire class jut got up there and spoke for 10min lol...I hate how my school works though especially with this. 10th grade, before IB starts, most students get crap teachers who still have students summarize, well IB doesnt like that. So, in 2 months most of us had to learn how to analyze and write a literary analysis paper and then present for 10min. Pretty sure one girl just broke down and cried for 10min while another person went =/

Is your BF in IB? Because any presentation over the subtle themes and whatnot about some random book probably isn't too interesting to most other students

Hahaha yes, we are both in full IB We make a great team; he has some pretty amazing skills in the math/sciences department and is pulling off high 90s in chem and math, while I'm more of a humanities student and I can pull of the high 90s in English and History So he helps me, I help him! Granted, he is from Korea so I'm very proud of him for being in IB English even though he's only been speaking it for about 5 years! Its good to have a built in tutor He isn't doing his IOP until december, so he's compleately relaxed while I'm freaking out!

I'm thankful I had a great teacher for English 10, she really drilled how to write a commentary and how to analyze texts, so the analytical portion of this was a breeze... its just the public speaking aspect of it! But I'm aiming to be an English prof one day, so this will be great practice

[Drake Glau]

Well that's good, and by the way, theres no entertainment value grade on the rubric

[Austin Glau]

Although some people tend to sneak some in when talking to a big group. Helps to relive tension.

[thesunsetglow]

Entertainment is on the rubric?! HURRAY! I'm using a clip from a Hitchcock movie... "The Birds" hahahah hopefully I get some great marks for that one

[catsmartie]

trust me, its a lo;t easier than you think. Befor emy IOP on House of the Spirits i was freaking out; but you realise that as long as youve done the necessarily preparation, once you're about 30 seconds in you know you're going to be fine. Dont forget to rehease!

[~Lc~]

trust me, its a lo;t easier than you think. Befor emy IOP on House of the Spirits i was freaking out; but you realise that as long as youve done the necessarily preparation, once you're about 30 seconds in you know you're going to be fine. Dont forget to rehease!

you my friend, need a spell checker

[Sandwich]

I used to get nervous for the same reasons as you (blanking out, that is!) when it came to presentations.

Personally I solved it by never rehearsing beforehand -- if you've never tried to say it before, you can't worry that you're getting it wrong/that the time is going wrong etc.! Provided you're confident in the contents it's never going to go wrong that way. Sounds perverse but it entirely solved my anxiety issues so something has to be right!

Provided you have a strong structure for the speech, you won't get lost. I'd also advise that you have more than just cue cards if you worry about blanking. Make sure you've got all your important points written out in full sentences. You can easily avoid reading from your cues (...by just not reading them...) but if you have a mental blank you'll love yourself for creating a safety net which won't have you missing a beat

I don't find thinking about the audience very helpful (even if it is thinking about them in a silly way) because all it does is make you very conscious of the fact they're there and distracts you. Your best bet is to concentrate on your speech by pretending that you find it REALLY interesting and genuinely want to share it with everybody else Concentrate on what message you're trying to give over to people and, apart from making eye contact, forget about the people you're giving it to.