Final Mentee Presentations :-O

So Monday was spent sleeping in until 11 and then meeting with the lovely kids that I mentor to prepare them for their final presentation. It's through a program that is to help encourage architecture, engineering and construction fields with high school kids from the local areas and every year they have to prepare a final presentation to show what they've been doing all this time to their teachers and parents.

My kids were great (and yes, I use the term "my kids" because it's just easier to say than "the kids that I mentor"), but were concerned about getting up and speaking to about 100 or so people, so we rehearsed what they would say and the actual slides that would be showing up behind them as they spoke.

So the next day (Tuesday) was when the actual presentations were given and I have to say that I'm very proud of my kids, especially by how they presented themselves to the audience. They were well dressed and ready to talk to the audience. But what I found interesting is that sometimes the most talkative and outgoing students one-on-one end up being the most nervous and timid when it comes to speaking to a group of people.

Obviously it's very nerve racking and I think that they still did a great job in conveying to the audience what a structural engineer does and what type of structural engineering we performed for the project. The project was to design the framing for a typical ski lodge and so they had to explain what types of loading to use, the types of materials used in construction and how they would end up getting put together. So I was very proud of them and wish them the best of luck for the future.