Stress–Conquered

Being defeated is often only a temporary condition.  Giving up is what makes it permanent.
–Marilyn vos Savant

This week was much less stressful than last week, thank goodness.  Honestly the suspense of not knowing my marks was starting to kill me; my stress levels were unnaturally high, but they’ve dropped significantly this week 🙂

The week started out stressful with group meetings on both Monday and Tuesday for my big presentation on Wednesday.  We had so much to do: finalise our report, design an entire PowerPoint, and practise our presentation at least once or twice.  I hadn’t done much else aside from this project for so many days I lost count and knew I’d be thrilled to sleep again.  My mind spent so much time focusing on the project that I had a nightmare about presentation day.

After spending hours with my group mates working on our project on top of working and attending classes, I was too brain dead to do any other homework Monday or Tuesday.  Instead I started sifting through the 15.4GB of pictures I’ve taken thus far in New Zealand.  I received 50 free prints from Shutterfly.com for opening an account with them and needed to redeem my prints by the end of the week.  Since I bought a photo album here, I decided I should fill it with pictures from here, so my task was narrowing down all those GB to 200 photos.  As much as I would like to say this was quick and easy, the task was anything but.  I needed a lot more time to finish this giant project of mine.

Monday contained two rays of sunshine as well though.  I received my feedback and mark for my first two Co-op assignments 🙂  On my Progress Report, I earned an A- while I earned an A on my Annotated Bibliography!  I expected to do well on these assignments though, so I’m more relieved I did as well as I thought I would.

Tuesday started off fantastic (sarcasm).  I had just finishing brushing my teeth when my flatmate, Shaun, comes in saying our flat inspection would be in like ten minutes.  The four of us that were around quickly cleaned anything in sight to make the flat look as nice as possible.  Most of the major cleaning was done at various times over the weekend, so this was mostly touch-ups.  We still failed the flat inspection because supposedly our shower and toilet weren’t clean enough; they looked clean to me and even after knowing they’ve been cleaned, they look the same.  We are granted one re-inspection though.

With the drama of not passing our flat inspection behind me, I spent the early afternoon practising my first presentation of the week: SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of myself at my internship placement.  A few short hours later, I stood in front of Max and Shelley (my work supervisors), Jeanette and Stefan (my Co-op classmates), Katharine (my Co-op supervisor), Sonja (my academic supervisor), Joyce (the international Co-op coordinator), and Kate (the study abroad coordinator from Arcadia University…she was learning about the co-op programme) for my Co-op presentation.  (All I needed was a black book and I could have been performing at a forensics tournament :P)

Overall the presentation went really well, despite me talking too fast for most of the presentation, and a lot of conversation was sparked during the question and answer time.  Max and Shelley thought I did a great job and thanked me for making them look good throughout my presentation, not that they need my help.  At first I was uneasy about having so many people I knew as my audience, but this worked out well for me, especially having Max and Shelley in the audience.  They reaffirmed my analysis—the strengths in particular—and were always the first to laugh at my humorous attempts 🙂  With the humour, I’m just thankful my audience responded well and I never heard a cricket chirp.

Following my wonderful performance, I went to my next class only to have my newly inflated self-confidence bubble brutally burst, and not from over-inflation.  My Advertising Media Planning assignment was finally returned and my performance couldn’t have been further from the one immediately prior.  This assignment is a classic example why I don’t try to judge how well I do on assignments because I’m usually wrong.  Class started with two statistics about our assignment: 93% passed and 23% earned an A in some form.  I thought I did well, but didn’t think I’d even manage an A-; I was wrong to get my hopes up at these figures.  Keeping the rest of my emotions out of this, I received a C+…half a point from a C…with no substantial feedback whatsoever.  I hold myself to high standards, so for me I was told I failed for forgetting a summary chart that was mentioned once (I checked my notes).

The day of truth finally arrived, Wednesday.  After months of hard work, and more recently hours upon stressful hours of my life I’ll never get back, the day had finally come to present my Strategic Advertising Management group project.  We met the hour beforehand to practise one final time, our second time ever, in hopes of boosting our confidence.  After arriving to class, I wasn’t sure if the first group was ever going to finish; I thought their presentation would go on forever and I was done waiting.

This presentation went almost as well as my first presentation; I remembered everything I needed to say, didn’t talk to fast, remained confident the entire time, and answered a question well (despite being asked on the spot).  The audience only asked us one question and the lecturer only asked two questions, so my group and I believe this was a positive.  After class, we received feedback from the lecturer and I really wanted to know how we did, so I posed him a question.  In short, we were pitching a new advertising strategy in hopes of gaining the brand’s advertising business, so I asked if this scenario was real, would he (the lectuer) have hired us.  With a bunch more words about this being a lot shorter of a presentation and how young we would be in the work field, yes he’d have hired us.  He didn’t hesitate when he answered my question directly, as if he has confidence in us, so I’m now expecting an A on our presentation.  Hopefully we did just as well on our corresponding written report.

Two presentations in two days is exhausting work, so I took Wednesday afternoon off from work.  Max said I deserved a day off, so I took a load off.  I watched The Fox and the Hound while eating pineapple lumps before taking a 45-60 minute nap 🙂  Max said I could take Thursday off too if I needed it and I really wanted another lazy afternoon, but I’m not one to abuse people’s kindness.

I already planned for Wednesday to be an exciting day though.  Wednesday evening I went to Otautahi Tattoo and had a sketch done.  I was pushed into a now or never type situation afterwards as the tattoo artist who specialises in colour had the rest of the evening open and no another availability for two weeks.  I’m not sure if it was the nap, all the sugary pineapple lumps I ate, or being in New Zealand, but I went with slightly spontaneous 🙂  More on this in my next blog post!

After riding a crazy roller coaster of emotion, my stress is conquered and I can sleep peacefully at night.  Now to quickly write a follow-up post about my tattoo before my avid readers fall off the edges of their seats (over-dramatic tone).

“I promise to come home to you…Don’t count the miles, count the I love yous”  –“Miles” by Christina Perri
I love you!!! –> For handling my stress until it dissipated on its own
I love you!!! –> For receiving lots of positive feedback on my Co-op presentation
I love you!!! –> For managing my abysmal grade without exchanging angry words with the lecturer
I love you!!! –> For doing well on my second presentation
I love you!!! –> For being spontaneous!
ILYs: 150

SWOT Analysis Presentation for Co-op

Strategic Advertising Presentation

Tattoo 🙂