My Dissertation Talk

I gave my dissertation talk today. It went surprisingly well. I felt my delivery was smooth---with nary an “um”---and people seemed interested! I’ve learned that I have to practice talks 3-4 times before I’m ready to give them. (and the “presenter tools” feature in powerpoint is killer, I must say.)

The dissertation talk is a curious beast on the academic landscape. It involves summing up 5 years of work (at least!) in about 50 minutes. I found it very challenging to both adequately explain the work I’ve done and then make that explanation accessible to a multidisciplinary audience. Apparently, I didn't do such a bad job; I can’t explain how gratifying that is for someone who enjoys teaching.

I’ll post my slides one slideshare in a bit and update this post, but they do need a bit of massaging---I used animation to make images appear and disappear over the text, which doesn’t seem to work with slideshare.

Anyway, I’s tie tie now.

(image by the Schultz-enator)