Head Tale

I swear to god that I should just change the name of this blog to “Full Circle” and be done with it.  I'm seeing echoes everywhere…

I went over to school tonight to work on my Special Libraries assignment and bumped into a first-termer who was working with her group on a presentation they have due this week.  I asked what it was and it turns out it's the same topic and the same instructor I had at the end of my first term!  (Am I allowed to admit that I immediately did the librarian thing and offered to pass along my presentation so they could see what my group had done?  Well, I'll admit that but I won't admit whether they accepted it – how's that?  Plus their presentation was well-in-hand and I don't think they're going to get anything from what my group did at this point.) 

So anyhow, about half an hour, maybe even an hour, later, I was ready to leave and saw that they were still practicing in a classroom.  (I think my group had one rehearsal about half an hour before we presented. )  I stuck my head in to see how it was going and they asked if I'd mind sitting through it since I'd done the same topic.  Shea's at work tonight and I'll take anything that isn't my own homework every time.  So I said “yes” (just kidding – I love seeing other people's work – both presentations and papers.) 

I sat through it and, no offense to any of my old teammates who may be reading this, but I have to admit that it was way better than what we had done.  Actually, I'd go so far as to say it was right up there with some of the best presentations I saw in my cohort and classes all year. 

It was like a weird deja vu – hearing a group cover the same resources and issues that my group had done but with a completely different spin.  I wonder if professors like this or do they eventually get bored of hearing the same thing, year after year, with only the changing people and format for the presentation? 

If you saw my list of Top Ten memories, I made a joking reference to that one time a group did a presentation without Powerpoint…except I wasn't joking.  That is literally the only time somebody has done a presentation without Powerpoint in any of my classes this year. 
That also happened in this class and it was by a group who did a presentation on another topic that seems like it couldn't be done without Powerpoint.  (Why am I being so mysterious by the way?  I guess I'm trying not to come right out and say the class or topic in case some of their classmates get tipped off in advance of what they're doing?  Or their instructor?  Who knows.  Opinions shouldn't be allowed on the Internet, dammit!)

I'm no expert but I'll probably do a post someday on tips for giving a good presentation (at least what I think works.)  It will mostly revolve around the most effective way to use puppets.  And how it's probably not a good idea to blurt out “oh, shit!” when the projector's remote control batteries are dead all of a sudden.