Overall, I think my TED Talk went pretty well. I made consistent eye contact with my audience, spoke with good pace, volume, and conviction, and did not use excessive hand gestures that took away from my overall performance. I also think that my talk flowed very nicely from one idea to the next, and seemed to have the common characteristics of a TED talk: some humor, anecdotes, and primary examples that helped drive home the single overarching theme of the talk. For the most part, I spoke continuously and in an uninhibited fashion, and showed my point rather clearly.

However, where there is good, there is also bad. I did not start off my talk very strongly. In the second or third sentence, I lose my train of thought, and pause for too long before continuing. Also, I experienced the removal of some sort of throat demon toward the beginning of my talk, but thankfully overcame it with the help of my wonderful audience. Also, I swayed while talking, which was probably distracting. In the future, I hope to either remain more stationary, or use my motion to add to my talk. I also think I followed too closely to the talk I physically wrote and tried to memorize. The talk was two pages long, which is a lot to memorize, but I did it, and found that, while it helped me know exactly what I would be discussing next, it made it very hard to get back on track if I switched a word or said a phrase incorrectly. In the future, I will follow a more bulleted outline, and allow my speech to “flow out of me.”

Something that surprised me was how slow the talk felt. As you can see in the video, I glance over at the timer occasionally. I did this because in my head, I was nearing the end of my material, and when I glanced over at the clock and saw that only two and a half minutes had gone by, I panicked. Thankfully, my talk took longer than my nervous brain anticipated, and I fit within the time frame. Another thing that surprised me was the fact that I appear to be looking down during the entire talk, when I am simply making eye contact with the audience. Overall, my talk went as planned, and I am proud of how I performed.