Today was a very nerve-wracking day. I woke up with the knowledge that in just a few short hours I'd be giving a 30-minute presentation about foot and ankle structure. I hate public speaking. There's just something about it that doesn't mesh with my personality. I was pretty nervous, but I was able to down a brotein bar before driving in to campus to practice.
I got to the computer lab about an hour and a half before my presentation time, which gave me just about enough time to run through it a couple times. I sat down at the computer, started my presentation, started my stopwatch, and talked through it. By the time I finished this practice run, my stopwatch read about 27 minutes.
This was good.
I then reset my stopwatch, went back to the start of my presentation, and did it again. This time I took about 25 minutes.
Okay, a little short, but still good. By now there were only about 20 minutes or so until my presentation time, so I had to walk to the classroom. As I started walking out of the computer lab, I got this interesting feeling as though I was willingly walking to my own demise. It was weird. I got a similar feeling in 7th grade Speech class where while writing a speech I felt as though I was writing my own suicide note.
But I kept on walking. I walked into Malott like I had done so many times before. I passed through the tunnel bridge connecting Malott to Haworth like I had done so many times before. Then before I knew it I was entering the classroom where my presentation would take place. I grabbed the doorknob, turned it clockwise, pushed the heavier-than-it-should-be door open, and flipped on the lights. I then mindlessly drifted toward the podium, where I took my laptop out of my backpack, plugged it in to the wall, then plugged the projector into the 15-pin VGA port on the left side of my laptop.
I then opened up my presentation and pressed F5 to enter presentation mode. It was almost time. Except I was still the only person in the room. A minute or so later, my professor walked in. We talked a little about the paper while I tried to act like I wasn't nervous. Then another student walked in, and then another.
It was now time for my presentation, but there were only two students in attendance so far, so we decided to wait a little while longer for anyone else to show up. About 5 minutes later, we made the decision that I should just go ahead and start. I felt my leg and back muscles tighten as a leaned forward slightly, slowly rising to my feet. I then numbly walked over to the podium, laser pointer in hand, and pressed start on my stopwatch and then the right arrow key to begin my presentation.
Everything went fine from here on out, and I managed to bumble along through my slides and figures without making too much of a fool out of myself. When I got done presenting, I looked down at my stopwatch and quietly laughed to myself; it read only 20 minutes! So, somewhere between practicing and presenting, I lost nearly 10 minutes. I guess this means that I blazed through my presentation in a tongue-twisting slurry of words and incomprehensible noises. But I made it. I got through it. The feeling of relief afterward was so intense that I couldn't stop laughing for quite some time.
Feeling as though I was on top of the world, I went and got a haircut and then went home, where I treated myself to a delicious brotein bar lunch.
It tasted so much better for lunch than it had for breakfast. In fact, everything looked more cheery in general after my presentation!
In celebration of my presentation being done, Sidney and I went on a date to Chipotle. Not wanting to accidentally have a cheat day, I calculated out ahead of time all the nutrition info for what I would order. I'll run through it really quick:
I would order a Burrito Bowl with the following:
- Chicken
- Steak
- Double black beans
- Fajita vegetables
- Green tomatillo salsa
- Double cheese
- Lettuce
I added up all the nutrition facts and entered them into MyFitnessPal, and this is what that looked like:
Not bad for eating out.
When Sidney and I got home, we treated ourselves to the remaining 2/3 of that poppyseed "bread" that we had gotten at the Market last weekend.
We split it down the middle.
But seriously, this thing is really not bread at all. This is literally a poppyseed muffin in the shape of tiny bread. I mean, check out the sugar coating:
And with a hint of almond extract, this is the best poppyseed bread/muffin that I've ever had. I knew it would take a lot to dethrone the lemon poppyseed muffins from Mrs. E's, but this has unanimously accomplished that. It was just so amazingly good.
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