Friday, February 09, 2007

It's not always good to be the king

Next Friday my association (you know the one were I'm president) has to turn in a budget proposal for our annual "Spring Into Southeast Asia" event. I'm stressing out over this. And last night I hold a meeting only find very little attendance- its not cool. I didn't even choose this position and now I have to all this work (with pretty much only one other person helping me) and no one cares. My back starts to hurt every time I think about it.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

A Lecture that Changed Lives

As a second year graduate student I am required to give a lecture about what I've learned or a paper I've written, etc... Other students mainly talk about their thesis work, if they are working on one. I am not writing a thesis, so I decided to talk about my trip to Viet Nam. Since no one really cares about what any of us have to say (because no one is required to see us lecture) the crowd at one of these talks averages to about 5-8 and usually only consists of other students from our program. Wednesday, it was my turn.

As I have mentioned before I have really come a long way when it comes to public speaking. No longer do I have anxiety attacks or sweat like I've just run a marathon before speaking. Now my face just turns red.

So what happens? Some professor decides to give her class some extra credit for attending MY lecture? Why me? Because mine just happened to be that day. So I had to talk in front about 20 people, most of whom were strangers.