No, I’m not talking about doing yoga in my teeny tiny apartment, as was recently suggested when I mentioned this phrase (you know who you are). I’m talking about this final week I’m heading into right now, the last days of my life as an M.A. student.
On Friday, I presented my thesis at the NYU ECT M.A. Colloquium. The event was livestreamed (thanks sava!) and recorded. At some point I will take the video recording and sync it with my Keynote slides and put it all into one pretty movie and post it here or on my main site. But it’ll take a bit of time because:
- I’m not done yet, and
- I haven’t used iMovie since early 2009 and .. uhh.. it’s rather different now and I’m slightly intimidated, so it is going to be a bit of a learning curve.[1]
Anyway, my presentation went surprisingly well, and I was (am?) quite pleased with myself. In the days and hours before, I had rehearsed it but not nearly enough. I was crazy nervous. I’ve been a teacher for a long time and have also given many workshops to teacher peers, but I have never before stood in one spot and talked for 30 minutes. (Which, btw, is a bit ridiculous — I’m not sure anyone needs to hear me talk for 30 minutes. I’d so much rather do something with an audience!) Anyway, when I was rehearsing, nothing came out right. I’d get to a slide and completely forget what I wanted to say, or I’d use the wrong word, or I’d jump ahead, or say something off-the-cuff that I shouldn’t, and so on. I was thinking I was going to be a bit of a disaster. Even in the moments leading up to when I got behind that podium (I hate podiums!) and my computer, my heart was beating insanely. I was sure it was going to leap out of my chest and land on the floor in front of me. I had to have a glass of wine to calm down — not even joking. (It helped.)
But somehow, the minute Francine Suchat Shaw introduced me[2] and I began to speak, everything was fine. My heart was still pounding but somehow my mouth knew exactly what to say and how to say it, and my brain did a mighty fine job at pacing, too. At times it felt like someone else was speaking, not me. It was a bit like an out-of-body experience, and watching myself on video later it feels like that even more.
I’m glad it went well — I feel really good about it. Friday was a huge high. 🙂
However, as I said above, I’m not done yet. I still have to finish my thesis document (that is a design document, and will be roughly 40 pages-ish — my estimate, anyway) and then write two independent study papers. Eek. Yeah, a bit to do.
Worse, in all of the frenzied nervous activity and excitement on Friday, I somehow lost my NYU ID card. Yeah, less than a week to go and I lose it now. Nice, huh? Have to pay for a new one, too. What that meant was that all weekend I was essentially “locked out” of NYU buildings — including the library, where my locker is which contains all my research documents and books. I could have worked on my thesis document a bit, I admit, but I pretty much just turned into a lazy sloth all weekend and vegged out at home, sleeping and getting some much-needed house cleaning done. I also find it quite difficult to do any intense work at home because there is so much else to do there. Not to mention my cat is always clambering onto my lap or shoulders. Anything beyond reading or note-taking is not really going to get done in this space. So, really– I did nothing all weekend.
I’m not feeling too guilty about that, honestly — I know my body needed the sleep and goodness knows my apartment needed to be cleaned. But it’s going to be a very intense week ahead.
Here we go! See you on the other side!
