This and that

[lederhosen]

Gave my annual lecture to the Masters' students on Sunday. I didn't know when I agreed to do it that State Snail were going to schedule trackwork that weekend, so I ended up leaving the house at 6:20 a.m. and getting home again at 3:00 pm, all for a one-hour lecture (plus a little bit of preparation time, I wanted to clean up my slides a bit and run through it).

Overall it went pretty well. Better than last year, where I got a bit flustered in the middle. Possibly because there were 20 students this year instead of the 6 last year - while I feel the same way as most people about public speaking, it actually gets easier as the audience gets larger. If I try practising a speech alone, or with one other person listening, I just fall apart within a couple of seconds. Twenty is marginal - I was still a little nervous, and rushed through things - and with three hundred distinguished scientists a couple of years back, it was a piece of cake. (I felt sick afterwards, but that probably had more to do with external circumstances).

Though I realised too late that what I do every year is to dig out last year's presentation and add to it to reflect what I've discovered since then. This isn't so bad, but it means the presentation lacks structure - one of these days I'll have to take it apart and rewrite it. An hour is just too long to absorb unstructured information, especially given that my field is pretty much black magic to most of these students anyway.

But I did get asked a question at the end, which is one more than last year :-)


Then got home just in time to farewell reynardo and Ratboy for a week at the snow. (Rey's on uni break; I'm not wild about skiing, and I don't have much leave at present, so I decided I'd save the leave for Christmas and the money for toys). So it's just me and Dog-Or the Wonder Spaniel this week. I got up earlier today, so I was able to take him for a walk in the cold and the dark before heading off to work.

There was something else, but my brain has softened and I have a meeting shortly. It can't have been important.

Comments

[turnberryknkn.livejournal.com]

Huzzah on finishing the presentation!

And hope Rey and Ratboy have a wonderful time. :-)