Nerves of Jell-O
One of my students is giving a fifteen-minute talk at a conference in Salt Lake City this afternoon. At least, as far as I know, he's speaking there this afternoon-- I'm in Schenectady.
This is sort of a new position for me-- I've given lots of talks, occasionally on behalf of other people (I'm listed in one or two meeting programs under the name of my post-doc advisor, who sent me in his stead...), but I've never sent someone else to a conference. I've had other people speak at conferences about my work, but they were always co-workers, not students. I've also had research students give talks before, but in those cases, I was actually in the room, to provide a bail-out answer if they got stuck during the question period. It's a little weird knowing that someone several hundred miles away will be giving a talk in a few hours that will (somewhat indirectly) reflect on me and my work, and there's nothing that I can do about it.
It also reminds me that I really enjoy going to conferences (which in turn reminds me that I should sign up for this year's Gordon Conference), and giving conference talks. It wasn't always thus, of course-- after the first ten-minute talk I gave, some colleagues commented on the fact that I kept walking around in the presentation area, from the projector to the screen, and back and forth, which they said was a good idea. In fact, I was walking around because I was afraid that if I stood still, my knees would buckle. That wasn't a whole lot of fun-- not during the talk, anyway. After I got through it, though, it was quite a rush.
The first invited talk I gave was at the Centennial Meeting of the American Physical Society, which was sort of a double-whammy of nerves. It was the first time I'd ever been in an invited session, and looking at the list of speakers for the session was one a "One of these things is not like the others..." sort of moment. I half expected everyone to get up and leave when I started speaking, thinking that my presence was some sort of horrible mistake. On top of that, I was planning to use the same talk for my PhD defense a few weeks farther down the road, and the stress over that whole thing was just beginning to peak up.
When I came into the room before the session, though, I discovered that they'd set up a platform at the front of the cavernous room set aside for invited sessions, to lift the speakers and projector a good five or six feet above the level of the seats. Unfortunately, they'd apparently built the platform out of balsa wood and duct tape. When I walked in, the first speaker in the session was up there testing things out, and when he walked, the projector vibrated so violently, his slides were almost unreadable. And I outweigh him by a good hundred pounds.
We eventually figured out that there was one safe spot on the platform, over by the podium that they had inexplicably set up (scientists don't usually talk from a podium). This turned out to be a godsend-- I'd walk over to the projector, setting the whole platform slewing crazily, change the slide, and then walk back to the podium. When I was changing slides, everything was shaking so violently that nobody would be able to see that my hands were shaking, and by the time I got back to the podium, the slides would be legible again, and I could talk.
A funny thing happened there, though. When I started out, my hands were shaking, my mouth was dry, my knees were wobbly, and the whole nine yards. But somewhere halfway through the talk, I had the sudden realization that I just wasn't nervous any more. I knew the material cold (pardon the pun), the data were great, I had the talk down, and once I was actually up there talking, I had nothing else to worry about. At that point, it became fun.
I'd like to say that I was never nervous again, but, of course, my thesis defense came a month later, which pretty much blew any chance of that happening. My pre-defense case of nerves was enough to dwarf all the others put together, and didn't really let go until the end of the question period (though it lightened dramatically after the "Who discovered xenon?" question). And, of course, when I opened the celebratory bottle of champagne somebody had brought, I sprayed it all over my official advisor's coat (one of his other students said later "I wondered why John came back to the lab smelling like a whorehouse...").
Anyway, what started as a comment about one of my students has turned into a long personal reminiscence, which goes to show what an egotistical bastard I am. The point is, one of my students is speaking this afternoon at a conference, and there's really not anything I can do to influence events from here. He's got a good project, has made excellent progress, and his practice talk went well. Barring some sort of freakish occurrence (and I think we got that out of the way when we moved his talk out of the education research session, where "Computer Based Frequency Control of a Diode Laser" had been scheduled to follow "Perception of African-American Women in Rap Videos"...), he should do well, but I won't find out until Monday. Which leads to nervousness of an entirely different sort...
Not that you'll read this, but good luck, Colin.
Posted at 8:30 AM | link | follow-ups |