Tales of the Invisible Ben

Going Off Book

Tuesday I have to give a talk in conjunction with my dissertation fellowship. It's supposed to be about the chapter I've been writing, so my plan was to finish the chapter and then winnow it down into a talk. Unfortunately, I've written 40 or so pages of chapter so far, and I'm at best only halfway done with what I had originally planned. It is possible that I will be able to split this chapter into two chapters, which would be fine with me. Unfortunately I wrote an abstract based on the original chapter plan, so the talk is still based on the whole kit and kaboodle.

Since I have only half a chapter written and not enough time to really slam out the remainder before the talk, I've decided to do my best to cobble together a PowerPoint and go off book. This is an unprecedented academic experience for me. Although I've given scholarly talks at numerous conferences, this will be the first time I'll be doing it without reading off of a paper. Or even having a full paper available from which to read if needed!

Needless to say, I've grown rather paranoid about the whole thing, even though:
a. no one from my graduate program will be in attendance.
b. many of the key people associated with my fellowship, including the fellowship director, will not be there.
c. about half of my fellow fellows will not be there because of a history of science meeting this week.

However, my advisor WILL be there, which means I damn well better have something to show him. I still have hope that I will somehow be able to finish this chapter by Thanksgiving, though that will depend entirely on whether he thinks I can cut the current "big chapter" into two. And that, in turn, may revolve entirely around my presentation on Tuesday.

So we'll see. I spent today practicing giving the same talk over and over and over again, timing myself, tweaking the various slides, and getting frustrated that I can't seem to come up with a really engaging introduction. (I'm using the one I wrote for my chapter, but that seems to work better on the page than it does out loud.) I'm not sure if I'm ready, but it's getting there. I figure 3 more practices tomorrow and I should be ready.

I'll let you know in a little while how things go and whether or not I succeeded in making concepts like ferroelectricity, electroluminescence, and photoconductivity comprehensible to a non-expert audience.

Update (11/17): The talk went over pretty well. It ran longer than I intended, as is perhaps to be expected when dealing with an audience, but otherwise, I think I was generally comprehensible. The most disappointing aspect of the whole affair was the lack of attendance. As I mentioned earlier, I knew that there would be many people away this week or otherwise unable to attend, but even my advisor had to cancel at the last minute. Oh well, at least this is done and I can get back to thinking about that chapter I've been working on...