So I lied... and Comments on Public Speaking

Turns out that I don't have access to the server's webspace at the lab, meaning that I can't post my presentation online. I'll do a write up instead later on. Ooops.

I went to University today to attend the department wide presentation series, where the graduate students will be presenting. I'll eat my words from my previous posts and tell you up front that these presentations *weren't* as stupid as I initially thought. (Note: It's important to keep track of things that come out differently than you initally thought because it keeps you honest, and I personally think that's very important).

Presentation format: 10 minutes to speak, 10 minutes question/comment period. Professors from other labs attend to give comments from a different perspective from instead of just your own advisor. Students are encouraged to be active (and also required to attend 10 lectures and ask atleast 1 question from all of them). This is a decent format because it gets people to stick to the point.

I've found the presentations to have some varience in quality some have been quite good and the rest pretty okay and the good presenters are able to answer questions in a thoughful manner. So I'll have to revise my position on the Japanese students that they're not as bad as I initially thought-- I needed to get out of my little hole and see the world.

My presentation occurs tomorrow morning and I'm currently rehearsing in my room. I am very comforable presenting in an informal situation with just a few penned out notes and a chalkboard or something. I have all the freedom to go wherever I want. The problem with a power point presentation is that I'm stuck to what I've got written down. At different times I'll be thinking differently and often if I were to make the same presentation informally, it'll be subtly different depending on how I am thinking at the time. But I'll still be making the same main points and I don't necessarly have to follow my format.

It's kind of fascinating discovering that my mind works like this. I've written about this once but I'll not bother link to it (it's an essay on language I've written over the summer and I made a link to it last month or so). But say if this post was deleted in a crash right now. I'd still have the same ideas, but you can be sure that it'll turn out slightly differently. It's something like that. I wonder if this is how the brain compresses information (or is it something I learned to do because I like to find ways of remembering the most with least amount of effort [ie. I like to remember the main ideas and re-figure out the details as I go along.. saves on the memorizing]).

Wish me luck on my presentation.

As for tomorrow, I'm going to celebrate in a cool kind of way. I'm going to jet out of the University to check out a festival called "Hina-Matsuri" where girls go out and dress up in Kimonos. So I'll be in my suit after my presentation and I'm going out take pictures with them. Not a bad way to celebrate to me :)