A lamb to the slaughter

Well, I guess I'm ready both to go to Florida and give a presentation there. I've made my powerpoint show, and even burned it onto a cd! My advisor went through it with me yesterday. She thinks it's good. Moreover, she likes one of my slides (a flowchart detailing the image analysis process) so much that she might steal it to use in her presentation!

Oh, I guess that's something I haven't told you yet. Turns out my advisor is also talking at this meeting. She wasn't really planning to, but another faculty member here is chairing some sort of symposium on Monday, before the actual conference starts, and he signed her up to give a talk. She's only going to be there for Monday, however, which is why I'm still stuck giving the other talk. The titles of our two talks are virtually synonomous. This is part of why she wanted to look over my presentation: she wanted to make sure there isn't too much overlap between them. Susan's an old pro. She probably gives tens of talks a year, and so she's rather laid back about preparing them now. It's not uncommon for her to put together a slideshow the day before she leaves, or even on the airplane over! I'm much more uptight about this.

She's not too worried about the overlap between our presentations though. They're separated by 4 days, and certainly there won't be a one-to-one correspondance between her audience and mine. Also, given the sheer number of talks that people will be going to over the course of the week, even if they do end up going to both of ours, by the time mine rolls around, they'll have forgotten Susan's. So hey, seeing as this is the one thing they'll be getting twice, maybe it will be the one thing they remember! They'll all go back to their respective homes being psyched about hyperspectral imagery! yeah!

So anyway, Susan is very reassuring, and thinks that I'll do fine with the presentation. I told her that it's not the presentation that worries me, but rather the Q/A session afterwards. She's not very worried about that either. She says that it will be obvious (in a good way) that I'm junior grad student presenting the results of a project that I've worked on only a portion of. I mean, come on! My acknowledgements slide lists 12 people, and that's in addition to the 2 of us, who are "authors". So that it will be fine if I answer that that's a portion of the project I'm not familiar with, and that I'll be happy to refer their question on to someone knowledgeable back in Davis. She actually said that people will sympathize with me for being a "sacrificial lamb". Those were her exact words! Now that's not very heartening! I don't want my first scientific talk to be my deliverance by higher powers, to higher powers, on the alter of a Florida hotel conference room. But I guess I don't have much choice in the matter...

Maybe if I don't wear the sacrificial ring I'll be able to escape being painted red and slaughtered.