Today was a day of no great significance. As SSP draws to a close, we are spending much of our time wrapping everything up – OD codes, PSETs, and our final report. We were given the time slot that was usually used for lectures to work, and I finished up the Monte Carlo histograms and orbit visualization for my team. Nothing much happened at lunch, other than Sara pointing out that I was eating fried French (she was offended that I was eating her people). Sara, as it turns out, was also a bit sleepy, as evidenced by the picture.
After lunch we returned to Herty to work, but not before we were treated to a lecture by one of our TAs, Ian. His presentation, titled ‘my talk’, was about how to give a presentation. He explained how to practice, how to stand, and how to talk. For example, he demonstrated how at the two extremes of the familiarity continuum there are ‘the mess’ – has no idea what they’re talking about, and ‘the TED talker’ – has practiced a million times and knows everything by heart. His advice was to stay in the middle – know what you’re talking about, but it shouldn’t be clear that everything has been memorized. At the end of his presentation, he split us into groups of 5 and gave us 10 minutes to create a part of a presentation on bees, and the best group would win the “#1 speech-giver award”. Unfortunately, as it turns out, having 35 students on a single google presentation while on a bad wifi network doesn’t go very well. Someone pasting the entire bee movie script certainly didn’t help either. As the presentation was essentially impossible to edit, and we had no motivation to work hard on the speech, we all goofed around. In the end, Ian gave the “#1 speech-giver award” to not only one group, but to all of us!
After Ian’s talk, we resumed working until dinner, and both the work time and dinner passed uneventfully. After dinner, we hung out downstairs in the common area we call the Hive. There, Sara discovered two things: one, that I was the only other person here who had heard of the grocery chain Albertsons, and two, that Albertsons is based out of Boise, Idaho. Unfortunately for her, this means that she can never step foot in one ever again. After this devastating blow, we started walking over to work at Herty. When we got to the front door, there was a small puddle that we needed to cross, so Olivia and Sai had to help Sara cross the puddle, or else she would surely trip and die. And now, here I am at Herty, procrastinating working on my report by writing this blog. Unfortunately, as I have now finished writing this blog, I now have no excuses left to procrastinate.
-Pierre
