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[warrioreris]

I finished with my gender class today. Gave my presentation. Got 18/20...and lost the points for fidgeting--tapping my fingers on the table, and twisting in the chair I was sitting in. I nearly thought he was going to take points off for me sitting to do the presentation, but apparently sitting is alright. Apparently, the presentation itself

Comments

[koyetay]

It depends on the degree of fidgeting. I mean, it's a big deal for us Comm students, but we're held to fairly strict public speaking standards. A whole letter-grade for fidgeting seems excessive, but it can be seriously distracting for the viewer and can really reduce the impact of the presentation. The viewer is paying attention to the movement rather than the speech or the viewer views you as nervous and therefore lacking in preparation or even knowledge on the subject.

I always try to channel it into large, deliberate hand/body movements.

[warrioreris]

Alright, so first off, this was an informally run anthropology class. If he was expecting formal presentation manners and was going to grade based on that, then he should have clearly laid that out. Second, I wasn't fidgeting that much. I tapped my fingers on the table maybe once or twice during the course of the speech, and the twisting in the chair was me turning to the larger projection of my slides in order to point things out to people. In any event, my little twitches were hardly worthy of the deduction, and it pissed me off that he gave me shit for it when he got up in the middle of my presentation, walked out, and came back a few minutes later.

[koyetay]

Oh my god. That is completely inappropriate. In a Comm class, that's like the worst possible faux pas, to enter or exit a room while a speech is in progress. For the instructor to do it, while grading the presentation? I've never heard of such a thing

[warrioreris]

I would have pushed the point then, but it's not really worth it. Getting those two points wouldn't change my final grade in the course. I would have still ended up with a B. And, no, the presentations weren't filmed or anything.