Your Nervous Heart

Today's title comes from an excellent track by my brother-in-name Rhett Miller from the Old 97's, my favorite band to come out of Dallas. And why was I nervous today? This morning I had to give a shirt-and-tie 30 minute oral presentation to my class and 4 of my teachers, as part of my Master's track class. I had a nice 40-slide PowerPoint made up to put up on the massive projection screen (we have a large auditorium-style classroom, with theater-seating for about 150), so it wasn't like I had to just give a monologue with no props, but it was nerve-wracking nonetheless, as we are expected not only to be captivating but on a graduate educational level. Jerry Seinfeld summed up the fear of public speaking pretty well in this clip:



Jerry also demonstrates the response my presentation received:



Actually, it went just fine -- everyone was pretty attentive, asked questions, and a few told me afterward that they enjoyed the presentation. Of course, I stumbled a time or two -- though not as bad as old Admiral Stockdale:



I will likely have to do another one next quarter, so the practice is good for me.

Last week, in Therapeutic Skills lab, we learned about casting/splinting and even got to practice putting arm and leg plaster of paris casts on each other. Each of us got to apply both of the casts, and got each one put on us. As you might envision, it was a fairly messy lab -- water buckets, wet plaster, tape, ACE wraps, etc. -- but a ton of fun. For some reason I kept thinking about Smykowski.



Well, finals are on me once again -- I have my 1st one -- Clinical Medicine -- in the morning, so time to put on my War Face.