I recently presented at a Sigma Tau conference at Cal State Northridge. I was nervous about presenting and being smart enough to hold my own with other graduates from other Universities. There was a lot of doubt about my ability to write, speak in public, and the perception I was putting forth into the world. Would I represent CBU well? Does my abstract match my excerpt? Will the audience be able to see what I’m espousing in my writing? I had the opportunity to have a mock-conference with Sigma Tau the week before my presentation that I could work through what portion of my story to present, to choose the best piece to exemplify the subject of my panel and the greater conference, and to start talking about my piece to others. Because of this mock-conference, I had a majority of my edits done, but I still had a lot to do. It was the first time outside of class that I talked about my writing and I needed practice.
The paper I presented was a creative piece, which is unusual for an academic conference. Being that Sigma Tau includes both critical pieces and creative pieces and the CSUN conference was open to creative pieces, I submitted a short story I wrote for Advanced Creative Writing with Professor Tronti a few years ago. I knew I had something with this piece, so I took it and turned it into a screenplay for another class in my Creative Writing minor. In that class I perfected and changed what was not working and what was unclear. That helped with a majority of the edits I did this year. Instead of having one semester to work on this story, I had one year, and what a year in changes that was. It allowed me to meditate on my writing and what I really wanted to say with my piece. Writing outside of class is different from being forced into turning in something before a deadline. Having the opportunity to present and working through my story pushed me into having a dream of writing a novel. The conference had a breakfast and lunch that allowed extra preparation time and networking opportunities. The panel I was on had five students and one Ph.D. moderator. The presenters consisted of four CSUN graduate students and myself. Two of us presented creative pieces and the other two presented critical pieces. We had an hour and fifteen minutes to present five pieces. That left us each 10-15 minutes of presentation time with fifteen minutes of questions afterword. In my preparations, I planned for 10-12 minutes of reading. Two of the presenters had longer pieces and took the entire 15 minutes, and two of us had shorter pieces. We actually ended on time with exactly 15 minutes for questions. This is unusual and because there was actual time for discussions, we had good discussion between the panelists on anxiety, our panel subject, and the authors intent of writing and our deeper thoughts on the subject. A conference is a great opportunity and I had such a great time. I got back to CBU and wished I could present a paper every week, It’s a rush of confidence and academic advancement. I did learn that, as writers, we have to get over the feelings of embarrassment about our writing and that we need to take chances on our writing and ourselves.
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Look through this informative powerpoint our President, Joseph Chan, put together. It offers tips and tricks to speak well and pull off a successful conference paper. |
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Cal Baptist Archives
May 2015
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