Senior Defense had been tough for every senior. This year changes had been made to the scheduling making every student stress about the upcoming dates leading up the defense week. Now that the stress is over many students have shared their many thoughts on how defense was for them, with many complaining about the way the teachers had scheduled due dates and assignments stating they did not have enough time for much of the revising work. Other students had expressed that the way they got feedback from students did not help them at all and wanted the actual teachers to point out what they need to fix on the artifacts. The defense was a bit of a mess with only a few having a full defense and with the rest having a half defense, but it’s over and that’s all that students are happy about the most. 

Student Interview 

Bridget Leal: “While the Senior Defense did prepare me for the future and became more comfortable with presenting in front of an audience, the overall experience was stressful and draining. During the week of Defense, my mental health suffered greatly and juggling other assignments while preparing to present was very stressful.”

Stephanie Gonzalez: “Though senior defense made me want to seek mental help, in the end it made me realize that it really will help me out in the future whether it be at work or during college presentations. The process itself is stressful, time consuming, and somewhat draining, but the moment you get up in front of your assigned class, everything you practiced for starts to spill out and it feels like a breeze.” 

Jennifer Gonzalez Chavez: “I felt as though I was underprepared at first; a lot of the assignments and examples were constantly being edited, so I had to redo a couple of slides while trying to figure out how my script was going to be laid out. The whole ‘practice your presentation’ was another issue I had too. While others were busy practicing, I had to redo half of my slides because of an artifact I had chosen. We also didn’t have a lot of time to actually practice presenting, where the alumni who came to talk about the experience spoke as if they had almost a month to practice with their script. Although I did feel a bit rushed, the experience was pretty enjoyable. I ended up feeling confident by the time it was my turn to present, albeit a little nervous, and I believe I did a good job on the presentation aspect of it.”