Approximately Adam: The Conference

April 18, 2005
The Conference

Last night confirmed my dorm room philosophy that if the roommate's gonna be up late, I should be too. The hours between when I went to bed and when he did were a sweaty, anxiety-ridden hell.
Depsite my fears, today hasn't been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I got up ready to go at 7:30, made it to breakfast before 8, and made it to the SAU before 8:30. I talked with a former classmate of mine who was also presenting, then had the catered juice and minor breakfast stuffs at one of the tables in the Fireside lounge. As it turned out the two gentlemen we were chatting it up with were the dean and the assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts. The latter had a very Ian Holm feel to him, both in appearance and accent. Somewhere in between Bilbo and his Garden State character.
The presentation I was involved in got off to a late start, being the first, and the crowd was significantly smaller than I had imagined/feared. The first guy simply read his paper, but he did it well. I was nervous about the level to which I had hacked it down via a ruthless Word AutoSummarize/Manual-Edit cycle. But it worked out well; I had to keep up the pace with my reading, but afterwards Dr. Kray (the moderator) told me I finished exactly on the maximum allotment. I was followed by a female fifth-year student whose presentation was far more substantial than any one else's on the panel, with a PowerPoint presentation to match. The next kid ran significantly over and kept going even after the moderator's repeated calls to finish up. I felt bad for the last kid as a result; the people for the next panel were piling in while he's trying to present his paper (a surprisingly even-handed look at the Palestinian/Israeli issue). He never lost his cool though.
Afterwards, I met with the kid who I was talking with early and got the professor who invited me to take some photos of me all spiffed up to email to my parents. The rest of the day I've spent trying to get signatures for the mid-term grade report. Considering I got less than four hours of sleep last night, I'm feeling pretty good right now. And the dress clothes breathe like nothing.

^{posted by Adam at 14:23 |}

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