Many very smart people show up poorly during oral evaluations – or presentations. They have lots of good knowlege and ideas, they just can’t organize and deliver them. Practicing verbalization overcomes nervousness and also reveals flaws in mental organization and understanding. Talking your ideas out loud is critical.
Ideas always seem to make sense “inside your head,” but translate poorly when verbalized. We have all had this experience. Consequently, actual oral presentation becomes an essential learning tool that must be practiced. Start in private, then practice with others. Ear buds have made talking to yourself socially acceptable (no one will ever know :). Verbalization objectifies our internal sense-making and exposes your ideas to some “social sunlight.” And simultaneous with any verbalization, our inner critic hears, reforms and redirects these ideas even as they are issued. Every speaker has a pre-formed idea of how this painting should appear, but when you get out the actual coloring box, the results are very different; “that didn’t come out right…” Practice, practice.
Another skill for success in a pilot oral (and in future safe flying) is successfully “chair-flying” every proposed/planned scenario. This requires “surprising yourself” with a lot of “what-ifs” that any good examiner will also present during an evaluation. “You are 4500ft over this highway and the visibility drops (or the alternator fails) what are immediate action items and follow-on plans to resolve this situation in the safest manner?” Your imaginative and diagnostic skills, developed for a flight test oral, are also critical pilot tools for future safe piloting. This again deploys the “stoic mindset” mentioned in other blogs. If we visualize “rainbows and unicorns” for every flight, we are woefully unprepared for the actual world of flight where “stuff happens!” Any experienced pilot has to accurately run a “pre-mortem” on all the potential risks to be fully prepared for safe flight (or their pilot oral). Practice that, and have fun out there.
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