The spring finally arrives in Cambridge!
The temperature was around a comfortable ~15-20o C (I don’t speak
Farenheit, if you mind) this past week. Flowers started to bloom again. The warm
sun shines bright, and everyone’s wearing shorts again to class. What a time to
be alive… well, except if you’re me somewhat dying from catching a cold.
Yes, the week of Journal Club, my immune system, which I am
often proud of, decided to fail on me. I couldn’t take much rest either, as I
had a midterm the night before JC. As a result, I was feeling crappy about
myself heading into the presentation. Nevertheless, the show must go on, or so
I thought.
Going into the presentation, I was feeling confident about
myself despite being sick. I had prepared a decent ppt presentation (with many
animations and simplified figures, as well as a doge at the end of the slide) and
crafted a well-narrated story (out of a pretty confusing Nature paper). However,
everything fell into pieces the minute I start my talk. So to refresh my tired
self before the talk, I decided to drink my usual traditional (Indonesian) concoction
made up ginger, honey and other herbs, called Tolak Angin (which in English
literally translates to ‘Repel Wind’). Usually, the sweet yet warm and spicy
blend of Tolak Angin would often wake me up and get me ready for an exam; yet
however, for some reason, the plan backfired that day. Perhaps because I was
sick at the time, I ended up burping quite a lot during my 10 min talk which
often made me pause quite a lot (can't wait to watch myself on the video later).
Additionally, I had my all my notes prepared on the ppt slides, and little did I know that I couldn't access the first 1-3 sentences of it (which were my important 'trigger' words) on Leslie’s computer due to track pad problem. This caused me to panic quite a lot since
I would not know what to talk about on each particular slide. Thankfully,
seeing familiar faces of the teaching instructors and fellow friends in the
audience helped calm me down and finish my talk.
So moral of the story, kids, is don’t get yourself sick the
day of an oral presentation; it (along with a series of bad luck) can seriously
mess you up! Although I think I did somewhat okay in the end, still I wish I
could’ve been better. Regardless, spring is here, and I am feeling slightly
better so I might as well forget about it and enjoy the nice weather!
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