This past Wednesday, I presented my elevator pitch to my peers in class! I was worried going in about memorizing the points I wanted to make. I felt like I did pretty well presenting to a professor on campus but I was nervous to present with no notes at all. I sometimes get scatter-brained when it comes to organizing my thoughts and what I want to say, but after viewing class presentations on Monday and seeing how positive everyone was towards each presenter, I realized that as long as I remember why the subject is important to me, I’ll hit most if not all the necessary topics.
When I went up to present, I tried opening with a fun hook to lighten the mood and maybe make the transition into my goals easier, although now I think I probably excluded that part from my speech since it didn’t hit how I wanted it to with the class. I was also nervous about using an example to begin my presentation because I didn’t know how much time it would take up. Every time I practiced, it ran too long. Since it was important to introduce the career path I want to go into, however, I knew I just needed to figure it out on the spot. I actually thought I went too fast by the end of my presentation!
Luckily, my presentation was around 4 and a half minutes, so it ended up being perfectly timed. Looking back, I don’t think I was clear enough when describing my desired career path since it was pretty different from the rest of the class. I also know I didn’t touch on some subjects like how my experience as a history major would help in my civic life. However, I think I did well on touching on how my skills as a history major would specifically benefit a future employer and discerning that topic from how my skills as a history major would benefit me in the career path I chose.
Doing this elevator pitch project has helped me learn how to coherently organize my thoughts in presentable manner, as well as figure out how to best communicate speaking points to specific audiences. I felt like I was able to be a lot more casual in front of my classmates, but in front of a professor I was much more succinct. Planning the elevator pitch also helped me realize some skillsets that I can put on a resume! It’s hard sometimes to think about personality and professional traits you would bring to a job, especially as they pertain to your major, but I definitely was able to come up with some ideas for how to improve my resume and improve how I describe myself. Lastly, I always find that practice presenting in front of people is really valuable and important, since in history related fields you tend to present a lot! I get nervous presenting, but this project helped me learn about a new and different way of presenting.
Comments