Not many people would rate “giving a presentation” as their favorite thing to do. But whether you love it or hate it, there’s a good chance you’ve had to give at least one during your school career. Presentations can help build communication skills, confidence, public speaking abilities, self-esteem, and other useful traits. But no matter how prepared you are, things can still go awry. When they do, it’s always good to remember that everything in life is a learning experience.
Someone once asked, “What was the ‘please stop’ school presentation that you witnessed?”—and the internet went wild. The post clocked 11,000 comments as people shared the most cringeworthy and embarrassing moments they'd seen in class, from a Computer Security student openly admitting to illegally hacking a website, to another who fully plagiarized an essay—even a voice actor who took things to the next level by awkwardly running around the stage pretending to be all the (bear) characters in a children's book.
Bored Panda has picked the best of the absolute worst presentation moments for your scrolling pleasure. Let us know your favorites by upvoting them, and feel free to share your own experiences of epic presenting fails.
#1
The antivaxxer chick that did a presentation on why vaccines cause autism... followed up by someone elses presentation on how vaccines do not cause autism. It was a weird day.
Image credits: anon
#2
Someone in my class did a book report on the dictionary. The teacher was pissed, all of us students thought it was hilarious. Never heard the end of the presentation.
Image credits: sharmander15
#3
Psychology class. Our final was to research and to a presentation on a mental illness. One group chose necrophilia. Started with the first slide saying 'lets crack open a cold one'
Image credits: Aquaticfilly0
#4
Us.
We were to make a film retelling the story of Hamlet. It was supposed to be five minutes. Being the creative nutcases we were, we made a 22 minute film complete with a commercial break which made fun of prior books we had to read. Ophelia was a Jersey Shore whore who refused to take her Prozac, Polonious was a perverted Greek philosopher, and Hamlet was a depressed emo. Sword fights were video game based, with Mortal Kombat themes. We presented it to the class and were cut off after five minutes.
We received an A-.
Image credits: anon
#5
In college during Abnormal Psychology, a student did an entire presentation on Obama's bipolar disorder she kept citing an article from The Onion.
Image credits: sbh97
#6
In college, someone was doing a presentation on Nelson Mandela and kept referring to Africans as “African Americans”.
Image credits: ginabeena
#7
This one happened a few months ago only actually :
We were in law and entrepreneurship class and we had to make a presentation about a made up company we would invent and the two class "clowns" made their presentation about a drink and their slogan was "If she's drunk she can't say no" and neither of them wanted to read it.
They just wanted to skip over it, but the teacher made them read it and asked them to go back to their places, i had never seen someone so calm and angry at the same time. When the class started hesitatingly clapping, the prof said "Stop, this isn't worth clapping for"
The next week, the two of them went around all the classes during the morning reading time to present a video about consent
Edit : Sorry for my english, i meant teacher, not professor, we're still in high school.
Image credits: Red1Monster
#8
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.
Image credits: cooldart61
#9
It was my sophomore year English class, this kid who was reading his essay in front of the class and started to stumble over some of the words. The teacher recognized the words and found the essay the kid plagiarized and started HELPING HIM READ IT the kid didn’t understand what was happening and just thanked the teacher and kept reading.
Edit:
I don’t have time to reply to everyone but here’s a few more details for clarity. This was in like 2004, the teacher found the essay on the internet. He gave the kid a day to try again. The kid was stumbling over the words because they were big ones he’d evidently never seen before. Everything else is fuzzy since it was over 15 years ago. Cheers! Thanks for the upvotes!
Image credits: comicazi06
#10
I studied went to school for Computer Security. In an introduction to computer security course, we had to do a project on Social Engineering. A student decided that for his project he was going to find a way to gain access to a chosen website.
* He found a small local business website.
* Identified that the domain was registered to an email address from a local ISP
* Called the ISP to reset the password, they asked him for his last 4 of his SSN, so he hung up.
* He found the phone number of the business, so called them and pretended to be from the ISP offering 3 months free if the person did a 5 question survey. They accepted, and answered some BS questions, then he asked for the last 4 of the guy's SSN, which they gave no problem
* He then called the ISP with the last 4, got them to reset the password of the email account
* He then logged into the email, and used it to get the domain registrar to send a password reset to the email, which he used to reset the password of the domain account (and deleted the email).
* He recorded all phone calls and screenshotted the whole process
As he presented all these we kept expecting him to say "but that would be illegal, so I didn't do X", but he went all the way.
The professor finally stopped him after he said he logged into the domain registrar and told him to destroy everything and never speak of it again.
I think the professor was a bit nicer than he could have been... potentially to the point of accomplice (telling him to destroy evidence).
Image credits: tjt5754
#11
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.
Image credits: Stauen
#12
Freshman year college public speaking course. Had to give a persuasive speech on a “controversial” topic.
Being the deep thinker I was, wrote my speech arguing we shouldn’t have seat belt laws, it was a personal choice... blah blah blah. Almost finished my speech, cute blonde girl gets up and runs out of the room crying. Girl sitting next to her says that her friend had just died in a car accident from... not wearing a seat belt.
I freeze and look over at the prof. She says don’t worry about it, it happens. If I remember right I got an A or B. The girl ended up being a friend of some friends and I would see her around campus and at parties. Never worked up the nerve to talk to her or apologize.
#13
Enviromental science. For our final project in the class we were allowed to talk about
Dude decides to do his project on global "cooling". Buddy was up there for 7 mins explaining to the class how the earth has been getting colder and colder, and how its eventually going to cause problems to other species.
Teacher was really passionate about this class and you could se her squirming in her seat the whole way through the presentation. Whole thing was a Big WTF.
His sources were online forums.
Image credits: LlamaManatee
#14
Sophomore year of high school we were tasked with a bringing in an object from home and giving a presentation on how/why the object explains you as a person. Kid brought in a knife, not a big one, but a knife nonetheless. He actually gave a decent presentation...but ended getting expelled because of it later that day.
Image credits: jlhendo
#15
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.
Image credits: partofbreakfast
#16
Some guy in my class, about 12-13years old, confused "heroic" and "erotic". The teacher asked if he really read an "erotic" book and he said yes, as the student watched in disbelief. Took the teacher 30 seconds to catch up the misundersting.
Image credits: Dahns
#17
Ooooo do I have a good one! When I was in school we were asked to create a project that would help solve some issues in our environment. Anyway, this one guy who is probably one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met (and I don’t say that lightly) suggested the idea of flying cars, and his reasoning for why it would help the environment was because “then we wouldn’t use so much gas, just like airplanes!” And I just sat there like what does he think airplanes run on? F*cking pixie dust?
#18
This was my presentation, and it was about the science behind how mountain dew can dissolve a mouse. This was in 4th grade. Needless to say I got some parent complaints.
Image credits: anon
#19
Someone gave a speech about durian in a class once. She brought a small frozen sample that thawed as the class went on. The professor let students step out the room. Coincidentally, one of the culinary classes reported a gas leak and pulled the fire alarm.
#20
In high school a student died in a car accident where she was driving. There was no record that stated she was distracted by her phone or anything, but the school decided to have an assembly shortly after talking about distracted driving and using her as an example. Telling the whole school she'd be alive if she was doing what she was supposed to.
Image credits: Orsus7
#21
Presentation on WWII. Student had just discovered all the neat transitions you can use between slides and decided to use a different one each slide.
They used the flashing heart transition between a photo slide of a mass grave and a photo slide of [the German dictator].
Image credits: pomegranatefresh
#22
I was in 4th grade and a girl in my class did an oral report on Martin Luther King and how he was a hero for freeing the slaves ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Image credits: Conhoff
#23
In Speech 101 in college we had to pick a children's book and voice act each character. That was it. That was the entire assignment.
Well... One student decided to take it to the next level. He chose a Berenstain Bear book and decided to not only do voice acting for every single one of the characters, but also act it out.
It was physically uncomfortable to watch this guy scramble around the room and pretend to be bears and other animals. It was not well done. It was awful.
Image credits: anon
#24
One year in a violent political upheaval class a kid gave a presentation and the whole time he said ***pheasant*** revolution instead of ***peasant*** revolution. I had to stifle a giggle for his entire 15 minute presentation.
#25
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 teachers face and he didn't seem very amused.
Image credits: otterusingreddit
#26
My elementary/primary school was a religious school. So one day when we had an assembly by the religious members of our school, they were explaining the importance of praying and all the discipline issues. While one of the members were saying stuff about faith or whatnot one of the other members interrupted him and started to say to never lose focus while praying she then went on to say that even though there is a house fire to not stop praying, the most “yikes” thing was when she said that even if your parents are dying and asking for help to not stop your prayer. I was completely shocked by this and couldn’t believe what she said to the whole school of children ranging from (4th grade- 8th grade). I looked around to see the reaction of everyone but everyone seemed normal.
Coming out of the whole presentation. I told one of my friends how messed up that particular message was. Basically someone heard me saying that and like a little snitch went to tell that lady what I had said. I was called to meet her and she confronted me about saying bad stuff about her speech. I told her that yes, I did because one of things she said didn’t stick to me well and told her which one I disagreed on. She said well that’s how we are suppose to be when praying. I was lucky she didn’t take my words too seriously and let me off the hook.
I thought it might’ve been a slip of the tongue kind of thing she must’ve said in the presentation, But by the end of the confrontation I was proved otherwise.
#27
Compared to some other stories in here this is minor, but it was a group project for one of my literature classes. There were five people in this group. According to the rubric for this assignment, everyone was supposed to have equal speaking parts.
One of the members in this group would just *not stop talking.* Half of their presentation was just her talking (and she went on about each of her slides for like 5 minutes). The rest of her group members had like 1 or 2 slides each, and she had IIRC 5 or 6. She would also interject into the other group member's parts to add her opinions.
The look on my professors face screamed "Just shut up already!" everytime she talked.
Image credits: anon
#28
During nursing school a guy decided to use my little pony figures as props to a seminar room of about 100 people. He told the class that he would refer to himself as his pony name for the duration.. Don't remember what it was.
Also, not that this is relevant but he wore a black leather trench coat and it was pretty hot in the room yet he never took it off... cringe.
Edit: He wasn't a student he came in to do a talk about epilepsy and his experience with healthcare. We got to review them at the end and I gave him a good score because he actually had a lot of interesting things to say about his condition even if it was cringey.
Image credits: anon
#29
This was a Spanish class in college, and I think the assignment was something like "talk about your best friend" or some such, just kind of a softball assignment so you could practice using the vocabulary. And one classmate's friend was evidently a friend with benefits.
Image credits: greeneyedwench
#30
During our practice rounds for senior presentations, a girl got up with her PowerPoint that had paragraphs of text on each slide and then proceeded to read the paragraphs word for word from her notecards. The teacher stopped her and asked if this is how her whole presentation was and when she responded yes, the teacher stopped her and asked her to change her presentation. She wasn't understanding what was wrong, so we kindly gave her some feedback. She redid the presentation a few days later but the original was ROUGH.
#31
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
Image credits: RoadFlowerVIP
#32
When i was a ninth grade student, we had to present the poems we made in english class.
most people wrote about embracing their culture, loving their friends, etc.
and then there was that one kid who recited a “lifestyle poem” which compared fat people to beached whales and said that people who don’t work out will die before they’re 20.
Image credits: nqrze
#33
We had this senior talent show that a few male students could sign up for (No idea why it was only guys, or how the few people even got nominated for it) and they all had to do their own act. Some sang, some danced, some put on a funny skit (possibilities were endless)
Well, each year someone who never got told they weren't good at singing would end up on stage. One time this guy did the evolution of boy band songs and it was just below average singing for (no joke) 15 minutes straight.
Bonus skit that I'm glad didn't stop because it was hilarious, one guy did a wrestling skit with different movie characters and my friend was the announcer. When Indiana Jones got into the ring my friend announced "Its the BDSM bad boy himself" and somehow that slipped by all the school staff members and made it into the DVD's the school sold. Another friend of mine sang Disney princess songs while wearing a sonic hat and got second place and at least 3 girls gave him their number.
Image credits: anon
#34
B-school ethics class - we had a group give a presentation on how society benefited from the tobacco industry. They were ripped to shreds by the professor and rest of the class.
#35
In 4th year university we had a year-long seminar course of 15ish students. Our big end of year project was to give a 3 hour lecture on one of the historical figures we’d studied.
One guy got up there and was so nervous he blasted through his content in less than an hour, without hardly taking a breath. Nobody could understand him, the prof didn’t step in to tell him to slow down, and he was sweating so profusely his shirt was soaked through.
I felt really bad for him, but oh god.
EDIT: the class was taken several years ago, and had more like 8 or 9 students. The presentations still took the majority of the semester. Brutal.
#36
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, ect.
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, ect. 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 Schwarzeneg 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.
Edit: Thanks for the gold, honestly thought this would get buried, and can anyone explain the office reference? I genuinely hate the show so I'm not sure why people kept bringing it up.
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 atm, 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.
Image credits: whatnameisnttaken098
#37
I had my college freshman English students present 10 minutes on their favorite hobbies, with PowerPoints and handouts.
This one stoner kid decided to do his on Magic: The Gathering, which I was pretty excited about, since I'm an avid player.
He started his presentation by announcing to the class, in a booming voice, "I AM A PLANESWALKER!" The next 15 minutes (5 over the limit) he explained the lore and backstory. He never once said it was a game or fantasy series; he literally presented it as if it were fact. He sounded completely insane, describing how he loved raising the dead and waging war against Elves and Angels.
Awkward aside: he failed my class, and we later had to play in a major tournament. I beat him and knocked him out of the prize bracket. He was only in my area because his family had been evicted and he was living with a friend.
#38
Theatre school, one guy did a 30 minute presentation on why UK Grime music is the future of theatre...expect it was just music videos and no context.
He failed. We all had headaches after.
#39
A kid in my middle school class (late 80's) decided to run for class president...he was one of those kids who was squarely in the middle of the student hierarchy - people knew him, but knew he was a bit off.
His last name was O'Brien. Some people called him OB for short.
He gets up in front of the school to give his speech, and finished with his campaign slogan.
To quote, from a very famous US ad at the time "OB! It's the way you should be!"
Yes, his campaign slogan was the one for tampons. The round of ironic applause only fueled his fervor and he became more and more hyped up with the crowd, encouraging people to start chanting the slogan. Ugh.
#40
When I was in eighth grade, we were assigned to each make a 10-minute presentation about a controversial topic. One girl made her presentation about how she believes women shouldn’t be allowed to become President.
(Edit to clarify: to make matters worse, this was in 2014 or 2015, so it wasn’t that long ago).
#41
Not a literal presentation really, but we had an assembly in high school where the students that helped plan homecoming would announce the nominations for homecoming court. It always had a cute little theme and like a short skit involved.
Well at one point the audio they were using as the cue for the skit failed. They just kind of paused for technical difficulties, but this one girl from the planning committee started singing a random Disney song a capella while improvising a dance to go along with it, I guess as a distraction from them trying to fix the audio?
She kept trying to get people to join in with her, but nobody did, and she eventually just kind of trailed off mid song and started pouting that nobody would sing with her. Then once they got the audio fixed for the skit she pouted and snapped the way through the rest of her lines, which made everything even more uncomfortable.
The other famous one was when a girl in our class running for student government referenced a hashtag that she was trying to make popular during her campaign speech to the whole school. The hashtag was something catchy about her having a big a*s. There was a genuine collective "yikes" from the crowd when she said it. I don't think she got elected.
Image credits: hayeday
#42
One day a group of highschool girls wearing really...uh appealing clothes went to the stage at my school's talent show and started twerking thinking they were nailing it. Everyone cringed so much, and the people with the middle schoolers were super uncomfortable. When they finished the teacher presenting the show went to the microphone and said "Congratulations! You got the whole audience clapping!"
But no one was clapping.
#43
In history class, we all had to do a presentation about some sort of injustice in the world. One kid chose a prison camp for his topic.
All his powerpoint slides were photos of men being stripped, chained, whipped, sodomized. We were 13.
Edit: Yes, his project was about Abu Ghraib.
#44
I was doing work experience with a bunch of special needs kids at a school. We were watching a play that I don't remember the name of, which was about someone who was in a gang or something and got HIV.
Instead of having any action or dialogue, the story was told through characters standing out the front and telling the story to the audience. It was dull as hell. The special needs kids were getting so restless, and I couldn't blame them, because it was terrible.
#45
Junior year of high school, for our AP English class, our group made a 30 minute telenovela of the Scarlet Letter. The whole thing was in Spanish.
#46
Grade 11 physics we were told to a presentation which would account for 30% of our grade. The curriculum was new and the cumulative project being worth 30% was mandated by the province. Also the teacher was new and didn't provide a lot of direction. This was fine for most of us.
But it wasn't fine for Chris. He spent 30 minutes describing the physics of a perpetual motion machine. It was not a debunking. Very awkward.
#47
Once in the seventh grade I did a report on the African penguin but it had a nickname called the jacka*s penguin so I decided to call it that and I almost got suspended on the 5th day of school
#48
It was a presentation that my art teacher made for the rules of the classroom and it was full of minion memes.
#49
A teacher asked up to compare the cells in our body to anything we can think of. Obviously some students compared the parts of the human cell to schools, jails, libraries, normal things right? Well this one student that sits next to me had a different idea. These were group projects keep in mind. This girl managed to strong arm her group to compare the human cell to the infamous webcomic Homestuck. She did this successfully. Not only did I feel dirty but her group felt worse for having their names on it.
Image credits: anon
#50
In high school my best friend, who had learning disabilities, read a monologue that she’d written. It was half plagiarised Shakespeare and half nine year old style writing, everyone else laughed.
