Current events presentation!?

Question

I have to do a presentation on my current events journal that I have been working on "all summer" for my AP U.S. History class. I have to talk about my journal and what it was like being an informed citizen. I did all the work, but in a matter of 2 or 3 days. I don't know how to do a presentation on that! Help please

Answer 1

Mmmm... this does illustrate why it was to be done over time. Much like studying which has the best effect if done piece by piece over days and weeks. (Not to say don't cram for a test! Any studying is better than no studying at all, especially for the grades!)

In this case, I can tell you the idea was for you to do it bit by bit and internalize the pieces as things unfolded. If you had, you would (hopefully) have kind of organized related things in your head as you went along, with almost no extra work. Might not have, after all, this is a first try for you with it so you might not have succeeded all that well.

So, how do you do it now? Since it isn't already sort of done, you have to slog your way through it all. You have three tasks:  organize the material, make sense of the relations and directions of the various major tracks, and imagine how you might be now if you had actually digested it slowly as it happened.

Organize the material into related things. If there was a local scandal, maybe a mayor and an aide had an affair, he threatened her husband, who also worked for the city, with firing when the husband made trouble, it blew up on them when an auditor found the mayor and the aide had used city resources to communicate and a couple city "business" trips to have fun together, they both threatened people who the auditor asked to testify about such, then the mayor left the country on a business trip after being charged in court and the judge requiring him to stay in the state or stay in jail, then there were probably lots of stories about it. You could collect them together and make a timeline for how it all unfolded, think about the bad things that were done, how one led to another as people tried to avoid trouble, then accepted trouble and tried to avoid jail, even how the auditor, the police, and the press used each new bit of knowledge to pry into the mayor and aide's defenses and spill more and more of it. Expand that to thoughts on critical thinking, what parts the public had a right to know and what ought to have remained private, even when the public had such rights, and how each actor in the drama took advantage of that. What crimes were committed? What arrogances of power? What parts were "just" harmful to someone but not exactly crimes? How did all the people squeezed between not wanting anything to do with the filthy situation, the police and auditor trying to find what crimes and harms had occurred, and the mayor and aide using every tool they could find to keep it all from unwinding and casting them into jail and penury?

Well, that kind of detail WOULD have been what you learned as it played out. For now, do what you have time for. The more the better for your grade.

But for the actual demand of the assignment, you have to at least imagine how you might have matured in thoughtfulness and how your decisions will someday be affected by what you learned and thought through. How many times do you see in here someone asking something like "I want to ask out my BFF's boyfriend, what do I do?" A story like the one I sort of imagined above (I really played fast and loose with a real story that's happening right now) could prepare you for how to deal with that yourself. Both ends of it. Actually, all three ends of it (after all, you could be the one two boys are about to conflict over, not just one of two girls pining for the same boy). Other aspects of just this story could prepare you for various ways you might encounter harrassment at work. (It's not just about a boss and a pretty secretary. There are bullies at work, there are people you see stealing, there are affairs you encounter that have nothing to do with work except one of the people is right next to you and you have to work harder to do the work she doesn't while she takes 38 calls a day from her suitor, and that just scratches the surface.) Being prepared a little helps a lot when those days come. Especially if one of those days is tomorrow.

The point is that you can learn from the sufferings of others, like watching the good players at an arcade:  they spend the money, and you learn the tricks. Then when you do spend a quarter (lol, yeah, like it's still a quarter), you get sooooo much more out of the game for a small input than you everr would have. In this case, you get soooooo much more out of life for the same small input.

So, imagine what lessons and thoughts might have come to you if you'd done it bit by bit over the summer and talk about how those could have enriched your life and helped you minimize their aggravations in your own life. Like the ones I mentioned above. Go with things like that.

But Lordy, start right now! You'll be surprised at how much work it will be, even after writing what you did.