How I went from leaving my first public presentation to delivering confident talks in front of 50+ industry professionals, the specific mistakes that sabotaged my early attempts, and the practical framework that actually works.

Core lessons:

My first ever public presentation, I just left. I walked outside and didn't do the presentation. The anxiety built as I sat waiting for my turn. My slides were perfect. I had practiced the content dozens of times. But when they called my name, I stood up, walked to the door, and kept walking.

No explanation. No apology. I just left.

The rational part of my brain knew I had prepared adequately. The other part, louder and more insistent, was screaming that I would fail publicly and everyone would see it happen. So I removed myself from the situation before that could occur.

The shame afterward felt worse than any failed presentation could have been.

Eight months after walking out, I delivered one of my best presentations. I presented my full UX/UI and Front-End Development portfolio to more than 50 representatives from relevant companies in the industry. This was a valuable opportunity to showcase the process of creating quality projects through my skills in user experience design, user interface design and development, and responsive design.

What changed in those eight months wasn't sudden confidence or a personality transformation. What changed was understanding what actually matters in public presentations and what sabotages them.

The difference wasn't in the slides. The difference was in how I prepared and what I focused on during preparation.

My biggest mistake repeated over and over: staying up the whole day and night before presentations, perfecting slides until the last possible moment. I would refine transitions, adjust font sizes, rewrite bullet points, convinced that one more hour of polish would make the difference.

Then I would show up to present on two hours of sleep. Exhausted. Unable to think clearly. Reading from slides because my brain was too tired to remember the narrative I had practiced.

I repeated this pattern multiple times before finally learning. The perfect slide deck means nothing if you're too tired to present it well. Your energy and presence matter infinitely more than whether your typography is optimal.

Technical polish feels productive. Practicing your delivery feels vulnerable. You have to confront whether your narrative makes sense. You can't hide behind design decisions.

There's a peak moment of confidence when practicing presentations. You practice the speech multiple times. It gets smoother. You feel more confident with each run-through. Then suddenly you hit the peak. You feel extremely confident about it. You know the content. You trust yourself.

That's when you need to stop practicing.

If you continue past that peak, you start second-guessing. You notice small imperfections. You practice so many times that the words lose meaning and you're just reciting sounds.

By the time you actually present, you've talked yourself out of the confidence you had built. You remember all the little problems instead of remembering the strong performance.

Hit your confidence peak, then stop completely. Don't practice again. Walk away. Let your brain retain the memory of that strong performance. Trust that muscle memory will carry you through.

This feels counterintuitive. But presentation delivery isn't like technical skill development. It's closer to athletic performance. Overtraining leads to worse results.

The most important lesson I learned: the key information will be presented anyway, but weaving it into relevant storytelling is the only way for people to remember it.

When I presented my UX/UI portfolio to those 50 industry representatives, I didn't walk through every project feature by feature. I told the story of specific user problems I encountered and how design decisions addressed those problems.

One project focused on e-commerce artwork sales. Instead of explaining technical implementation of payment gateways, I talked about the challenge of displaying high-resolution artwork images that let buyers examine brushwork details without destroying page load performance. That specific tension became the narrative thread.

Starting with an interesting question engages the audience immediately. For the portfolio presentation, I opened with: Have you ever built something valuable but struggled to make people actually see it? That question connected to the room.

Tailoring the story to the audience matters more than universal comprehension. Not everyone will fully understand every detail. Those for whom the content is intended will understand.

Stop working on the presentation at least eight hours before you present. Show up well-rested with decent slides rather than exhausted with perfect slides.

You'll feel when you reach that moment. The speech flows naturally. You trust yourself. When you feel that, stop practicing completely.

The first 30 seconds determine audience engagement. Write and refine your opening until it creates genuine curiosity or connection.

Nervous presenters talk too fast and never pause. Silence feels uncomfortable for the speaker but creates emphasis for the audience. Practice pausing after important points.

Keep water accessible. Dry mouth from nerves makes speaking physically difficult. Taking a drink also gives you natural pause moments.

Technical problems create stress. Show up early enough to test equipment, load your presentation, adjust seating. Remove variables you can control.

Don't try to make eye contact with everyone simultaneously. Pick one person, speak to them for a complete thought, then move to another person.

They're not hoping you fail. They want their time to be well spent. That means they're on your side.

I'm very thankful to my mentors, who were helping me refine my presentation multiple times down to every detail. Aleksandra Szczepaniak greatly influenced my development through the trainings she provided in the EIT Women RIS Leaders Programme, enhancing my overall performance.

External perspective catches things you can't see yourself. You know your content too well. Mentors identify confusing transitions, unclear explanations, and pacing problems you've become blind to.

But mentorship only helps if you're coachable. That means being willing to change things you spent hours perfecting. The presentations that went best were the ones where I incorporated feedback completely.

Eight months separated the presentation I abandoned from the presentation I delivered confidently. The transformation wasn't about learning presentation techniques. It was about confronting why I was afraid.

The fear wasn't about public speaking. The fear was about being seen as less competent than I wanted to appear. The fear was that my work wasn't good enough and the presentation would expose that.

Once I separated my self-worth from presentation performance, the fear lost its power. A bad presentation doesn't mean I'm incompetent. It means I gave a bad presentation. Those are different things.

The practical techniques matter. Sleep, practice management, storytelling structure all improve presentation quality. But they only work after you've addressed the psychological barrier.

Your presentations will improve with practice. But only if you actually give them instead of walking out.

Until next time,