Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Few Good Things

So I was mentioning that I had some good news. It's really just more of good updates rather than good news.

I had to give a talk in Bloomington on Monday going over my analysis. It was a presentation at the High Energy Seminar that they have weekly. I was fairly nervous going into the talk as I always am. I had given a practice talk to my advisor and I only clocked a little over 30 minutes and the talk was supposed to be at least about 45 minutes. On the way to Bloomington we ran into some traffic and so to pass the time, I gave the talk again to Jason going through the whole thing. That talk ended at 52 minutes, so I was hoping when I was up in front of everyone I would slow down enough to keep the talk pretty long. As soon as I started talking I stopped being nervous. I realized I knew and understood everything on my slides and I was excited to be able to present it to people that I have known for the past 10 years (I was an undergrad at IU as well). I talked slow and comfortable and ended in about 50 minutes. My advisor told me I did a great job and I didn't forget to mention anything on any slide. I am really proud of myself as I have grown as public speaker and I have become so much more comfortable. The first talk I gave I forgot my name. So it was a proud moment for me.

Then yesterday I got an e-mail from my advisor asking me to come to Bloomington and take pictures of the department to update the IU physics website. He said that he has seen some of hte pictures that I have taken and since I know the technical stuff that should be photographed and I know all the people in the department I could do a much better job than if they hired a pro. So that's exciting and who knows what that could turn into.

Jason and I got through 5 miles this morning and felt good. Our plan is to do that tomorrow morning and Friday morning and that's probably it for the week. I don't know how able I'll be able to run on Sunday after an evening of standing is super high heels at Jason's holiday party...but we'll see. Might feel good actually. Then I have a hot date on Sunday night to go see Modest Mouse which I'm super excited to see as it was one of the best shows that we saw at Lollapalooza.

Today my stand mixer is coming in the mail...and yes I'm that excited about it. Happy Wednesday all.

4 comments:

MNFirefly said...

Congrads, Leah! That's awesome!

Anonymous said...

Congrats and enjoy Modest Mouse - I love running to them

Iron Jayhawk said...

Okay...we need photos of your pretty new toy!!! I loooooooooove my mixer.

And I owe you a recipe. ;)

Joe said...

Congrats on your speech. :-)