Procrastination pays off

I had to do a Lit presentation today. I had the thing mostly written, but this morning before school realized that it had no organization whatsoever and was just generally terrible.

The project was to pick a poem relating to the book we just finished reading, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (oh how I love that book), and talk about how it relates thematically. It was a five-minute presentation, including the time we took to read the poem aloud.

I worked on it throughout the day and finished it during the class prior to Lit. I whispered the whole thing once through, and then went to class.

I was SO NERVOUS. Lit is probably the class that I stress about the most, because I always feel like I have no idea what I'm talking about. I sat through two of my classmates' presentation and tried to discreetly review my notes, but couldn't bring myself to totally ignore what they were saying.

Then it was my turn.

I started to freak out a little bit as I handed out copies of my poem, "It Was All Very Tidy" by Robert Graves. I made it through my introduction, but my heart started POUNDING as I began to panic about my unpreparedness. So when I started to read my poem, I read it ridiculously slowly. I figured that the points I would lose for reading my poem too slowly would be fewer than the points I would lose for being completely incoherent over the course of the entire presentation.

Reading slowly calmed me down, so I was fine for the rest of the presentation, even though I still had basically no clue what I was talking about. I threw in random references to the book that came to my head as I was speaking, but afterwards I thought I had done terribly.

I sat down. I can't even imagine how red my face had been.

My teacher looked over at me and said "I thought the way you read your poem was very effective...almost creepy, the way you went really slowly. It worked really well."

My classmates chimed in, agreeing with her, and telling me how well I had read the poem.

In the hallway after class, someone came up to me and told me they were impressed by how well-organized my presentation was.

Moral of the story: Have a panic attack in the middle of the presentation after not rehearsing, then throw in random facts whenever you feel like it. And people will think you are smart.