Conflict with Mentor

[Swan217]

I'm going to preempt the next few posts that people are thinking about writing:

"Don't air your dirty laundry"

"It's unprofessional to post publicly about such things and it embarrasses your team"

There, now that we got the concern trolling out of the way...

Most teams have an "executive committee" or at least a lead mentor/team leader to talk to and resolve such issues. I suggest going to them to resolve this conflict. One thing you may want to avoid is saying that you're entitled to present, no matter how much you worked on it. I'd stick with graciously arguing your ability to communicate the team's strengths to the judges. Maybe give an outline of how you were planning on presenting the information. But for pete's sake, do not argue how much you deserve or are entitled to give the presentation.

Barring that, or if the mentor in question is the lead mentor, then maybe you have to acknowledge the fact that even though you may be right, it's not worth fighting over and just let it go. Senior year is way too much fun to waste on worrying about a Chairmans presentation, which seems important now, but in a few years, you realize that it's just small change.