Today was my Political Issues presentation.

I was so damn nervous.

Cos in Political Issues, the Q & A sessions are killers. SMUrfs, especially the year twos who take our classes, are rather fond of asking biting questions to stump you at the end of the project.

So I was afraid, very afraid...

My presentation was on Violence on TV, in Films and Songs, as mentioned in an earlier entry. Me and my partner, April, discussed how different groups responded to the issue, and their views towards its censorship.

I think Ive been working on it too hard.

Tts cos I actually woke up from a nightmare this morning, inspired by the research I had been doing for the project. In the dream, the world had been taken over by the Undead, kind of like in Alfred Romero's Land of the Dead and the more famous Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse. It was so damn realistic. The zombies were all in various states of decay, with pieces of flesh hanging from their faces and open, gaping jaws. It was so frightening as my dream self was standing in the middle with 2 groups of them shuffling towards me on either side.

Shudder.

Woke up relieved to find myself in bed. I could've laughed if I wasn't so sleepy.

Later on, rushed to school to meet April. Arrived at the base of the SESS block and choped a bench to wait for her. Once she arrived, bought lunch and then went up to the GSR I had booked on Tues. Charlene was already there. She had asked me online half an hour before for permission to join us. Apparently, all the GSRs were fully booked.

The shortage of Group Study Rooms is a well-known fact of life in SMU. Some other groups who were also presenting that day had no choice but to sit along the benches outside the classrooms and seminar rooms to polish up their projects. Poor Samantha and her friend were in fact just outside our GSR, on a tiny bench beside the lockers.

Anyway, we did our project and it was a disaster at first. Some of the slides were messed up, and our points were in disarray. Then when we did a run-through, we discovered more kinks in our presentation. April had trouble pronouncing some of the words, so I had to switch sections with her. That meant re-familiarizing myself with the points of her section, and she with mine.

I got kind of frantic as the minutes ticked by. Everything seemed so last minute. Luckily April was cool about it. She managed to persuade me to take deep breaths and not hyperventilate or faint on the spot.

Soon, the time arrived and I still hadn't got all my points sorted out. Kudos to Charlene for suggesting to us that we request to be the third group to present. That gave me enough time to copy out my new points on the index cards and the break time for us to have a brief run-through. All the other groups seemed so professional. They never stammered or showed any outward signs of nervousness. Wow.

Then it was our turn, and before we knew it, it was over. We did stumble a little with the words, and there was one part when I forgot to click for the slides, but other than that, it was surprisingly all right.

What pleased us the most, however, was the fact that nobody asked us any hard questions. We expected to be bombarded, but yet what we got were merely questions that required us to clarify our points. Guess no one wanted to bully us. :3 I love them all!

After that, 2 more groups did their presentations, then we were finally dismissed.

Started out a sucky day, but didn't end too badly. Lol.

To all Muslims out there, SELAMAT HARI RAYA!