You’ve been here before: it’s presentation time in school and you have to sit through all of them, whether you like it or not.
And then there’s that one presentation that is painful…really painful…
We’re about to hear about some really bad ones…
Here are some hilarious stories from AskReddit users.
1. A real heartthrob.
“For 8th grade talent show, 2 girls sang the “Mr. Bledel” song (Mr. Bledel was a good looking, recently college graduated teacher) that basically was about how cute they thought he was.
Even then, it was incredibly uncomfortable and I remember looking at the teacher’s face and he didn’t seem very amused.”
2. Don’t do drugs.
“Opioid awareness, literally a few months ago.
Started with them blasting the ENTIRETY of the Disturbed cover of The Sound of Silence, while a slideshow of images containing sad stock photos with the watermark all over, random shots of really dark nighttime photos, and tons of poorly photoshopped drug images trudged on ever so slowly.
Then, two women told us the harrowing stories of how their sons died of opioid overdoses. Incredibly emotional, several people cried. Real downer, basically.
Then, a DEA agent comes up and tries to act all bad cop. He calls us, an assembly of high school students, grades 9-12, “f**king morons”. The principle was not pleased.
He is then followed by a nurse who was there to tell us the physical effects of opioid addiction and withdrawals and all that, and she did talk about that, but the whole time she was running around practically screaming jokes and doing sh**ty over-the-top gags trying to be the comic relief.
In an opioid assembly. Where two women shared the stories of how their children DIED. What the f**k was she doing being that loud and crazy.
Everyone came out of the whole thing with a general attitude of “yeah f**k opioids, but also f**k that whole presentation”.”
3. Boner time!
“Once in college I was in my Spanish class and our desks were in a “U” shape, I was on the very end of the “U”.
So some guy is giving a presentation, he is standing behind a podium. Gets a boner. I’m on the side and no one is opposite so I can see it…. dude just kept going on and on and on, I think he was trying to outlast the boner.
He ended up getting it down before he had to sit down. Was like a 10 min presentation that only needed to be like 3 min though.
Presentation was in Spanish too.”
4. About those animals…
“Grade 12 advanced placement English. We were assigned books then had to do a presentation on a topic somehow related to it. The book I was assigned was “the Stranger” by Camus, so I presented on existentialism in literature.
One girl was assigned Animal Farm. She started her presentation on…
Kinds of tractors used in farming.
She hadn’t read the book and assumed it was about actual animal husbandry.
It was a very long presentation. The teacher had to actually hide her face.”
5. Can’t imagine why he turned it off.
“Was in a video/film making class in high school. One group of guys did a parody of those Gatorade commercials where the athletes sweat is colored like Gatorade but it was a sweaty guy jerking off.
Apparently there was a Gatorade c**shot but the teacher just turned that s**t off immediately before it got that far.”
6. Sounds reasonable.
“In my high school “Current Events” class two freshman girls got a little lost in their research about ISIS. They somehow connected this terrorist group to the magic bullet theory used in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Me and the few other seniors were holding back laughter the entire presentation.”
7. Wow…
“In 1984, when I was in 6th grade, each class did a winter concert. The 8th grade football team sang “I’m dreaming of a black Christmas” in blackface.
Green Bay Wisconsin, Bay View Middle School.”
8. Choose your topic wisely.
“For a Public Speaking class in college, we had to give a persuasive speech. One kid did his speech about porn.
If he had had a legitimate argument, like “sex work is real work,” or “porn has a negative affect on a person’s self-image,” the speech would have been fine – we were all mature adults. But all he did was list the different kinds of porn he liked – in detail, with visual aids.
The professor stopped him after a few minutes, and asked him to explain what he wanted to persuade the audience about. He answered: “Porn is good.””
9. Time for “the talk.”
“When I was in high school my church youth group went to this church camp. For those uninitiated Thursday nights are normally the really emotional nights. Well this camp was different!
Thursday night the guy that started the camp comes on stage and begins giving a bunch of middle school and high school boys and girls the sex talk.
All I remember from that night was the quote, “Just because there’s a hole there doesn’t mean you have to stick something in it!””
10. That sure backfired.
“An Anti-Bullying campaign.
They spent most of the presentation explaining different types and ways to bully/harass people.
Bullying increased in school and everything got 10 times worse now that the students were more “educated” on the subject.”
11. Inspiring? Really?
“My Sophomore year we had to make a presentation about any person that made an impact on the world that was inspirational.
Someone chose Hitler.”
12. Still living with it.
“It’s me. I did this. I cringe about it to this day, nearly 20 years later.
I was 16 and in high school. My high school was going to do a spring talent show. I wanted to be in the talent show and show off my talents. The problem was, my actual talents are not ones that I could show off at a talent show. So I decided to try singing.
I have never sung in my life. I have never had voice lessons.
I was in my prime weeb stage and chose an anime song to sing. I didn’t know any actual Japanese, I had just memorized the lyrics from hearing the song so many times.
Luckily I didn’t make it past auditions, but several people saw an overweight girl in a Sailor Moon shirt try to sing ‘Butterfly’ despite having never done any singing or voice training ever in her life.
Nearly 20 years later, and remembering it keeps me awake at night.”
13. That is bad.
“I’ve told this on reddit a few times but it’s truly unforgettable.
“Smart” kid in the class was giving a deeply sourced power point presentation on religion in Europe. He opens up his files, proceeds to click on his project named N*gger”. He says “Clearly I wasn’t really paying any attention when I named my file.” He gives the presentation.
He stutters and sweats bullets while we watch in utter disbelief. The word is sitting there on the top of the file heading the whole time.
This was during a study abroad semester while attending a Cultural Communication class. He had to rot in his own s**t after that.”
14. Very cringe-worthy.
“When I was in high school, a girl from an absurdly wealthy family gave a presentation on why the rich are just as oppressed as anyone.
This was in a normal public school in Kentucky where about 90% of the students were middle class at best. You could feel the eyes rolling in that room.”
15. Where’s Arnie?
“We were supposed to have Arnold Schwarzenegger come to our school sometime around 1999 or 2000, principal was hyping it up for weeks, then about 4 days before his arrival it was announced on Friday that he wasn’t coming.
Fast forward to Monday during morning announcements it’s announced he’s changed his mind and is coming to our school tomorrow as planned.
Come Tuesday morning everyone is excited, were all amped to meet The Terminator, a handful of parents even came with VHS copies of his movies, posters, etc. Were all going to our gym/auditorium, taking our seats.
Principal takes the stage takes the moment to make some announcements, award honor roll, perfect attendance, etc. Finally she starts hyping up Around Schwarzenegger, everyone is excited and on edge, when she basically says “heres Arnie” and.
It’s the vice principal in a leather jacket holding a shotgun (not a toy one either) and spends 30-40 minutes trying to hype us up for FCAT all the while doing the absolute worst impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger I’ve ever heard.
Once we realized Arnold wasn’t there people start shouting, screaming at the principal’s for lying to us, along with some of the parents who came to this.
I do hope someone has footage of this meltdown of a bunch of K-5 kids shouting and screaming at the principals because Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t come to our school. Because I clearly remember 2-3 people having camcorders.
As for some of the questions, Arnold was scheduled but canceled last minute on not only my school but my cousins who he was supposed to go to on Wednesday. Instead he only went to one school in my city (which I don’t remember which one, but I’ll add it if I remember it)
Yes the principals apologized the next day, and the vice principal changed schools the following school year.
I have absolutely no idea why he thought bringing a shotgun was a good idea, but I think he was attempting to look the part, which considering his massive gut, really didn’t help.”
Yikes…I’m glad I didn’t have to sit in the audience for those performances.
Now it’s your turn!
In the comments, please tell us about a particularly painful presentation you had to suffer through.
