A presentation occurs this Friday. It's a general presentation to students and faculty. I've got 10 minutes to present my material and 10 minutes of question period. All students are to provide handouts of their materials of approximately 2~4 pages. Ok fine, I'm working on the handouts now. But why oh why must preparing handouts take over 5~6 hours!? That I cannot figure out.
I have so far spent time wirting out a point form outline of what I wanted to write, jumped around through the other research papers I've read to reference information I've gathered. I've spent 2~3 hours writing material, inserted images from my own research and from other papers. Cross-referenced figures in my document.
Have the document reviewed by my professor, whom decides that I should remove some of my background work reserach and focus on what I have produced so far (the problem is that I haven't done enough analysis to talk about what data I have). I need to add simple sketches of my system which is taking me 2 hours to do in Adobe illustrator. I need to make another figure which might take me another hour so. Rewrite sections, add new information have it reviwed again.
Why does making a 10 minute presentation have to be so painful?
I've lectured calculus, physics, chemistry, computer science and English. I can lecture for easily an hour with little preparation with just pen and paper (a chalkboard would be even more fun). But why must writing handouts, making diagrams on the computer and blah blah blah take 6 hours+ to prepare for a 10 minute presentation? Ineffectiveness of publishing technology? Incompetence? I haven't a clue but if I can spend 30 mins to an hour preparing what I want to scribble down on a chalk board in advance (even that is being generous with time) to prepare for a 10 minute presentation, I'd take that in a heart-beat.
I've been in lab since 10:30 am and it's mid-night right about now. I'm not amused... the sick thing is that I'm getting used to it too (never thought that was even possible for me).
And I still have to prepare a powerpoint presentation. Grr!
1 comment:
Thanks for the suggestion, I have done that before for informal presentations. I've got a beautiful set of notes on laplace transforms and how to use the complex exponentials.
The only problem is that this presentation that the students are going to be doing is a "formal" presentation (suits included).
In my opinion, it's a lot of hogwash.
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