Since I’m telling everyone anyway

So Tuesday was good, I went out trick-or-treating with the little cousins. I did dress up a little, to my shame … my roommate had this board of stick-on moustaches so all three of picked one to wear on Halloween. I wore my stache with an old plaid patterned blazer and I was a salesman, somehow. I guess one of those really greasy salesmen…..

And my roommate went to the Chinese Embassy, but it was closed. Haha, no free electronics for him, probably just an urban legend.

On Monday I did my first presentation which was on feature geometry (in Phonology, I’m not doing Math any more) and I am told that it was pretty good. I don’t know how much I believe it since these comments were expressed alongside a set of other interesting comments. At least I had a partner, which means I only had to talk for half of the 15 minutes and if I started melting into a hideous glob of stage fright I knew she’d still be there to present the conclusion.

This is how it went: I began, doing the intro, presenting the proposal, doing ok. But as pointed out by others afterwards there were few red blotches on my face. The blotches, as the ticking seconds passed by, turned into an even hue of scarlet across the entirety of my normally pasty face. I got redder and redder the longer I kept talking which is accompanied by the hot face feeling.

When I started talking it was mostly full, semi-flowing English sentences. However, as per the increasing blush I began to talk faster and faster as well. My mom calls this my quizzer voice. So by the end of my half of the presentation I was talking too fast and didn’t have any time to think and was almost going to start into a series of frightening convulsions where my voice wavers drastically and I can’t hold a piece of paper. Then my partner took over and I stared at the desk until she was done.

Then, of course, question period comes after and its usually only the prof who’s been asking questions. He asks us what we mean by 3D blah blah blah, so I say, well its like so blah blah blah. He continues to ask, “Could you draw it?” To which I promptly respond, “No.”

Apparently this was funny, saying no to a prof, directly, unapologetically. But my partner began to draw it on the board anyway. I warned my partner many times before the presentation that this would happen, turning red and shaking and what not. I think she felt fairly cautioned because she wasn’t mad at me after or anything.

That was my first presentation, only 3 more to go! Fantastic. People keep telling me it gets easier the more you do it. Whatever.