Rare

I'm doing a rare personal post. 

Before I go on about my personal defeat, I have to preface the post.  I realize I am lucky.  I am eating a salad with Sabra hummus, robusto cheese, toasted pita, raw garlic and it's accompanied with clean water and a Stone Cali-Belgie IPA.   I have a roof over my head, my sight is intact, a warm bed to sleep in, etc.  We all have our little issues though.

About two weeks ago gave a presentation to the Transit Alliance Citizens Academy.  The Transit Alliance is an advocacy group for transit and their citizens academy is an attempt to educate "regular" people (i.e. people who don't work in the transportation field) on various aspects of planning and transit. The idea is that they may go back out into the regional community and spread their knowledge of transportation.  Well, it turns out there were at least two people in the class who do work in the transportation field and one of them actually works for my company (!).

I gave a 20-25 minute presentation on a project I have worked on for about 4 years, The Quality of Life Study. It was the first time I'd given the presentation to such a large group and it had been a while in general since I'd presented on the topic at all.  So, bottom line: I absolutely sucked.  Now, you might be thinking, "she's just being hard on herself."  Nope, I got the student evaluations today.  OVERWHELMINGLY , I was described as dry, a bad presenter and even seemed not to know the material (!!). As I mentioned, I've worked on this project as the Program Manager for 4 years.

Long story short, I've been kind of sulking about it all day and have noticed my confidence is down in general.  I never entertained the notion of being a professional presenter, but for goodness sakes, I wouldn't have described myself as downright awful. I know there is an upside to the situation but I don't care, I'm sulking.