As a student, reporting is almost the sibling of assignments. I don’t know why do professors love to make their students do the teaching. We pay the school for us to teach each other? fuck it. It’s called transformative learning in DLSU or whatever. But for some of us it sucks.

I’m making this post not to make your grades higher but to save your fellow students from your boring slides. This is the compilation of all the things I learned from presenting reports and such in front of the crowd:

1. You are the presentation

Window’s PowerPoint or Mac’s Keynote it doesn’t matter what presentation tool you use. What matter is you. You are the presentation. Even if you have superior presentation tool but you failed on delivering the speech or worst “You just read what is written in your slide” might as well leave the stage and tell everyone to read what you wrote. You’re just making your boring presentation longer and even boring. So keep it mind to be as presentable as possible and don’t be boring.

2. Know Your Topic

This is the single most basic instruction our professor told us to do before the presentation. We are assigned a topic in which we are expected to be the most knowledgeable among the class. I personally had encountered this (I admit sometimes there are parts of my report which I know just a little) and it sucks. At least had a slight idea on what your topic is, common don’t be dumb. Next time you report make sure you researched on it. Ask the professor if there’s sometime you don’t understand.

3. Stop Hitting Around The Bush

Another thing that I hate about people’s presentation is that most of them talk crap. Dude, jumbling your words in a sentence doesn’t make you look knowledgeable it makes you look stupid. If you want to say something, say it. Don’t make irrelevant opening sentence. The more straightforward your presentation the better. If you want to look like you know a lot on your topic, use keywords on your slides and elaborate those keywords without reading any notes.

4.  Clear, Simple and Short

On your slide presentation, don’t fill the whole slide with the “The-Death-Wall-Of-Text”. Nothing is more boring than someone reading a slide which is filled with text. As Presenter’s University says, use the 666 rule: 6 words per bullet, 6 bullets per image, and 6 word slides in a row. Try to explore your PowerPoint for some quick editing. Use some pictures or be creative on your slide but don’t be too creative. Don’t put shining shimmering splendid things, it hurts to read your presentation!

• Make your presentations neat
• Don’t put a wall of text
• Use Pictures (Pictures not Cliparts!)
• Make it simple

5. Confidence

This is the last thing that I developed in presenting, though it’s not that fully develop yet. In presenting, be as confident as possible how can people actually believe on what you are saying if you look like a dimwit in front. Remember this, 80% of the time your are the most knowledgeable about your topic so don’t be afraid that someone will react on what you are about to say.

There, if you have your own tips and tricks in presenting please do comment below.