Almost ready

My talk for the big meeting is pretty much done. Today I went through each slide with my advisor (she's a saint) and now I feel much more confident about it. She made some suggestions, mostly just tweaking things here and there, mostly for the sake of time. We think that I will be really pushing the 15 min time limit.

While I usually get a little nervous about public speaking, I am always more concerned about the content of my presentation than with the act of giving it. Talking to a big group of people can be thrilling if I feel good about what I have to say. I was feeling really anxious earlier this week because I'm scheduled in a session with many big name presenters that I expect to be well attended. I need to be really confident about my talk.

Tomorrow I need to make some changes, then send it to my other advisor. After that, practice, practice, practice. I often get criticized for having too much for people look at, e.g. the judgement on my most recent poster was that it was "congested". So this time, I have very few words on my data slides, which means few reminders of what to say. I wrote out everything I want to say for each slide so I can get really comfortable with all the points I want to make since there will be no extra time for fumbling.

Now that I have my advisor's blessing, I am looking forward to the meeting and maybe even a little excited about giving the talk. Much better than I felt on Tuesday.