Lost points for not making eye contact...

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So I got my grades back for a presentation I did the other day. I did pretty well--a solid B--but apparently I lost quite a few points for "not making eye contact with the audience".

Thing is, I'm trying to translate statistics into English and explain them to a bunch of people, all while staying within my time limit and being understandable, using full sentences, etc. and I just do not have enough brain space left over to randomly stare at people's eyeballs. If I did that, I'd get distracted, start stuttering, lose words, lose track, and generally be horrible at communication. That's why I don't make eye contact to begin with.

Any way to convince the prof that making eye contact--during presentations or at any other time--is not the optimal choice for me?

Does the prof know you are AS? This would be the only way you could justify your presentation style.

The problem is that in real life presentations, this lack of eye contact diminishes the effectiveness. The eye contact builds a link to the audience and helps them trust the presenter. So the eye contact issue is a valid criticism. Sort of sucks, especially when the substance of the presentation is solid.

You generally don't have to make actual eye contact. You just look out at the audience.

True. As long as they think you are making eye contact.

I guess it depends on if he/she believes you (just thinks it's shyness & an excuse, and so "get over it"), and whether or not he/she values presentation over function ("other people will judge you the same way, so tough cookies"). It reminds me of interviewing for jobs, where 'impression' often seems elevated to a very high level of importance.

But I don't know. I guess the only way to find out is to ask.

I usually find a focal point it makes doing this stuff easier.

Life is unfair. You genuinely struggle with these things, but not everyone else cares. My dyslexic sister looses points for spelling sometimes.

you just have to remember to periodically look out to the audience, you dont need to actually make any eye contact. I do the same thing as you all the time

Yeah, I fake it. In school, I used to lose points all the time for this until I started looking out slightly over the heads of people in the audience. If I tried to actually make eye contact I would totally lose focus and get flustered and screw up in a major way, so I pretend to. I'm going to be giving a presentation (in Romanian) when I go to Romania in about six weeks, and you bet I'll be faking it.

~Kate

trick is to start from the left side of the room every time you come to a conclusion (not the final conclusion nor summary) in a presentation and when finishing the sentence off you look out at the audience over their heads and move you sight to the last person to the right. Look down again and go back to your presentation. And repeat.
At the end you turn to the white board/projector screen (whatever you're using) and then making the summary concluding your presentation you make sure you have a last page with random s**t or key words and when talking you turn to the picture constantly instead of the audience and then repeat the left to right look, but this time make it a bit longer and FIN.

eze, but took practice.

It happened to me a lot when I was in secondary school during speaking tests. It also happened to a man I've met, because he has a lazy eye and avoid making eye contact since it makes it worse. I think you should remind them that you have AS if you have a diagnosis, they should take that into consideration, it's not really fair that this kind of thing should be consider important (though, I work in primary schools and making eye contact is very important but since you have to make eye contact with everyone you can shift your attention quickly or just pretend you're making eye contact by looking at your audience).

Not making eye contact is a well known autistic symptom. I don't think they're allowed to rate you worse because of your disability (do dyslexics lose points for typos?).

I dunno, but all the dyslexics I know are pretty paranoid about typos.

I had a lot of trouble in high school with presentation. But I had to do some in university, I just look at their forehead and look at everyone. So everybody thinks you look at them in the eye and you catch their attention. If you can have visual support, use it during the presentation and don't memorize too much, try some improvisation. Get key points you want to share and make sentences with it. I've discover that if I try to memorize too much what I have to say, I get anxious and then I forget words. It's more relaxing to go with the flow of your speech.