"Your Home Away from Home"

My dress was ironed and I knew what I was going to say like the back of my hand. It was already sprinkling at 7:30 AM. While walking to class, I ran through what I was going to say. My biggest issue was that all of a sudden, I couldn't find my voice. I felt sick to my stomach when I began to spoke so I rushed to the cafe in Statler for a cup of tea. My group rehearsed again and did some last minute lint rolling. 

We knew we were presenting first but it didn't feel real until Mr. McCarthy shouted "1A!" We walked to the front of the classroom. I gave the introduction and talked about the history of Marriott. I found my voice. I spoke loudly, but slightly fast. If I hadn't spoken fast, I could have took more time to explain but my team would have passed our eight-minute limit. I sat down and the rest of my team presented their respective parts. Our presentation was over and the room erupted in claps. We all felt like a heavy load was lifted from our shoulders.

Being a Controller-Persuader, I have a very competitive side. Like the ILC interview, I went in thinking that everyone was a "competitor", but my feelings changed as the day progressed. Tomi presented a few groups after me and so did Rochelle. It was cool that Mr. Chan-Law came to watch us! I liked Tomi's presentation because their presentation was set-up so that each member was affiliated with the company. For example, someone was a CEO while Tomi was a valued member. Something scarcely seen that was demonstrated by us ILC girls was the ability to memorize what we were going to say. Spending time looking at notes throughout presentations was not a good look.

After nineteen other presentations, I felt like I knew everything about hotels. The main focuses were on the fact that companies claim to focus on their customers, employees, eco-friendliness, and quality. It started to rain heavily so we took our group picture on the stairs to class. 

All of 81 of us squished on the stairs

There were two teams that memorized their whole presentation, but the best presentations were from the international students. English was my second language too, but I could not have done a presentation in Cantonese or Vietnamese. They showed courage and dedication when presenting. Our office hours were cancelled and Mr. Chan-Law took us to buy our Cornell jackets! 

Today was so nerve-racking and inspirational. Before I presented, I felt scared and a little shaky. And after it's over, I felt relieved and look back onto it like "that was easy" After reflecting on my performance and all of my preparations, I realized that other students may have had to practice three times more to make sure all of their pronunciations were right. Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy said that they were pleased with the whole class!