So, after just two hours of sleep, I still managed to get myself to college. Amazing really. I was feeling really nervous about giving this presentation and it didn't help that I was feeling incredibly tired.
Once at college, I met up with Jamie by the library. Inside the library was Stan and Dave and apparantly they had been there since 11am printing stuff off. I had a whole lot of stuff to print off and I did plan to print it off in colour, but I had no colour printer! I then decided to print it off in colour in the library, but I didn't really want to spend 50p x 11 items. So, in the end I had to print it off in black and white which looks pretty shit, but it was better than nothing.
After I'd printed it all off we went to find Brian who took us to the multimedia room where he helped us out with what to say in our presentation. I decided, as he was speaking to take notes about it all. Like I said, I was feeling really nervous about it because I wasn't prepared for this presentation AT ALL.
We were in there for about 30 minutes discussing the presentation. He asked who was nervous about giving it and everyone put their hand up and then as the 30 minutes passed, he kept asking and the number of people raising their hand got less and less except for me who put it up every time.
After that, we had a 15 minute break and me, Stan, Jamie and Dave went back to the library where I took the chance to do some last minute work on the corporate manual, slicing it into an actual booklet, rather than A4.
And then it was time for the big moment.
We all went into the classroom next to ours which is bigger. There were 8 sections of tables all bunched together and people were placing all of their work all over each bunch of tables, spreading it all out so everyone could see. It was cool seeing everyone's work.
At this point, I could feel my heart beating really fast as I tried to sort all of my work out and place it onto the tables. It was weird. In my A3 pad, it didn't look like I had that much work and yet, when I ripped it all out of the pad and put it all on the table, there was fucking tons of it! Then I had all of the research I had done too. I had to pull more tables together to put more stuff on them.
Once I'd set it all out, which took me about 15 minutes to do, Brian called me over and asked me what course I was planning to do after this one. I said that I'd probably be doing multimedia, but Pam was trying to get me to do graphics. "Nah, come do multimedia mate", he said. He then explained what the course would entail and it sounds pretty cool. It sounds like the kind of thing I'd like to do, since I'd get to work with all the programs I want to, along with audio too which is something I'd like to do.
So, after that it was time for the presentations to begin. "So, who wants to go first?", Brian asked, as Ed and Alan appeared too. No one answered him. In the end, it turned out to be Stan first. We all crowded round his set of tables and then he spent about ten minutes explaining why he'd done what he'd done. He presented it really well I think and then we asked him questions about his work and Ed, Alan and Brian gave constructive comments about what he could do better.
We went round everyone. Each time, Brian asked "who's next?", and I kept quiet, since I really wasn't looking forward to doing it.
I'll tell you in brief about my friend's presentations:
Stan's was greeted with comments about him needing more experimental work and how he came up with his final logo.
Comments on Fisher's presentation were mainly to do with the fact that although he'd done some good research, his final items were lacking.
Jamie's was a bit of both. He needed to create better final items and do more research.
Dave's was sadly the worst, according to the tutors. I felt sorry for him, but I've been telling him to do more for so long, but he's just been like 'ah well'. The tutors had a lot of negative comments on his work, because he didn't have enough of it and how he had arrived at his final items.
And then, after Dave, it was me.
My tables were in the far corner of the room, so everyone gathered around them and I somehow...began.
It was so nerve wracking having about 12 people standing around all of my work and having to talk to them all. Still, I tried my very, very best and somehow managed to get my words out without too much stuttering. I started with my research and explained why I had done it, before moving on to the logo sketches, then the colours, then the fonts, business cards, letterheads, envelopes and corporate manual. As I was talking, my head was mostly pointed down at my work, as I found actually looking at everyone made me get my words jumbled up more. By not looking at them, it made it easier. I tried to cover as much as possible in talking, before ended on "and that's about it".
Absolute silence.
Silence.
"...anyone got any comments?", Brian finally said.
"...no, that was...amazing", Fisher finally said, before Dave agreed with him and Stan and Dave.
"That was excellent Neil", Brian said, "Any comments, Michael?"
"Fucking amazing"
Wow.
I looked at them all, especially the tutors, waiting for the critisism to come. None. Nothing.
"No one got any questions?", I asked. No one had any.
I could feel the atmosphere in those few seconds that I had impressed and pleased not only the tutors but the rest of the students too.
Ed said that I was way above the level required for this course.
Fucking excellent 10 minutes. I now want to do it all again!
I was on a high as I packed away my work. So very, very pleased. I ended up getting out of college at 5:20pm, because I took so long packing all of my stuff away. But, once home, I realised that if I can impress my tutors that much, that maybe I have a good chance of passing.
Excellent day.
