Reflection

I don't really like presentations. And I had two today. Well, the first one went pretty alright, I think, although my fellow group mates were pretty disappointed. Well, understandable because my very slack tutor did not give us any clue to what he expects from us. So, we squeeze out whatever creative juice we have out of our brains and came up with a pretty interesting presentation. Gah! At the end of it, he said something like "Next week's group, remember to not follow this pattern of presentation". Argh! You should have said something earlier!!! Oh well, it's done. And I'm pretty pleased that we all did our preparation and it went pretty well. I enjoyed it!

An hour later, I was due for another presentation. This time, alone and together with it, came its good and bad. It is good because there's no group meetings, anal stuff to handle, basically having a group presentation can be pretty complex and irritating. The bad part about handling a presentation all on your own is precisely that - you're all alone! Means, you do A LOT of research and you do it all alone. There's nobody to lend you a helping hand and you're left to learn to swim on your own! I wouldn't have complained so much had the topic been a little easier! 3 topics of presentation in one lecture and none of it sound familiar! My topic was on syntagmatic and paradigmatic. I breathe a sigh of relief now because it's over!!! But, oh boy, it was hard trying to figure out what syntagmatic & paradigmatic was all about. I had to read every single article that Dr. Ooi put up, which meant that there were many extra readings to do in a week. So, finally, after reading all the readings he put up, I had a sliiiight idea of what syntagmatic & paradigmatic was all about. BUT, I can't just have a slight idea of what it is. I am afterall, suppose to present it in the class. So, I have to get books from the library, google it, wikipedia it…and yeah, that's about it. So, gathering all sorts of readings and having read through all, I then had a problem, which was: information overload. So, I have to give a 10 minute presentation on something that I had no idea of in the beginning but had too much at the end. I had a hard time trying to decide what to include and what not to include in the presentation. Thank God, HE helped me figure that since it is only going to be 10 minutes, I don't need to be all-encompassing. Cover the basics and pray it will be good enough. So, yeah.

But, I still feel sucky about the presentation. Okay, I rehearsed my presentation last night to jiaying. It was her idea. It's not something that I would usually do but I thank God for it because while rehearsing, I realised that woah, I didn't know how to explain syntagmatic & paradigmatic properly. Yeap, I had problems. So, I kinda wrote down a script. Haha! Talk about feeling incompetent! So, I was super nervous and the room was very cold, so I was shivering! And so I prayed. And before my turn came, the postgraduate student walked in. And Ade and Mich looked at me and say "All the best". Yeah. Coz, it's so pressurising to present to the class when you know that there's a "stranger" who is in class and even if he is not paying attention to whatever I say, he can judge if I'm saying the right thing or if I suck in presentations or whatever it is. It is stressful - and yes, unnecessary stress!!! I thought I was going to die. I almost couldn't put my thumbdrive in. Sigh. Pray super hard! God is good! At the end of it, I don't know if I did well but I guess, my objective to explain the concepts well to my peers was met. Ade said she understood what was going on. So, that was a very encouraging sign. But of course, Matthew said he found my topic a bit abstract. So, that wasn't very encouraging! Nonetheless, I'm glad it's done and I think I didn't do that bad. In fact, I think people understood it.

3 long paragraphs on my presentation and I've still not gotten down to writing what I really want to write about. Talk about being long-winded!

Just today I was thinking, "aih, sometimes it's so much about me and so little about God" And during our presentation today, Janet made a comment (it was a religion module): Humans have made religion to suit themselves, for self-help, self-motivation…" And before I open my mouth to rebut her, I realise what she said is true. It's suddenly all about us. God bless us. God do this for us, do that for us, blah blah blah. When is it about God? When is it about glorifying HIS name? When is it that it is not about us? Difficult to pin-point a time.

Many people don't see me as someone materialistic and I am not severely materialistic (if there is even a need for differentiating this) but I am. There are many things in the world that I want and it is difficult to say "Okay God, everything is yours - including all the things I've wanted"…But, by God's grace, I have been able to say it from time to time and I know that deep down, I want to live my life for Christ, even though sometimes I wish for the things of the world.

Who ever said denying our selves and carrying our own cross daily was easy eh? Haha… But, God is good because He has promised to be there for us till the very end of age. He has sent us HIS helper - the Holy Spirit. He has done so much. So much that we are undeserving of. We have received much grace!!

Yeah. God is good. I want to live my life differently for Christ!!!