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SO… this presentation right… yeah… we give it… and there are 10 people in the group.  We had to speak for 75 minutes… which is like… 7 minutes a person.  I did the intro extremely relaxed, had some audience participation… I obviously had their attention.  From there another group member took over and passed around some demos and handouts… He did good… then came the fallout.  The next two guys get up there and we knew the topic they had… and the material they had… but we didn’t know that they were going to read it all word for word off of the papers they had.

8 pages of reading…. No slides… No breaks… Just nose in the paper… no lookin up…. just reading.  Their 7 minutes lasted 32 minutes.  32!!!  GREAT!  That left the rest of us with NO TIME to present and a LOT of material to get through…   not fun.

So here I am running the slides for them… waiting for the people to stop reading… looking at my distraught group members who are looking at me like, “HOW DO WE SHUT THEM UP?”  I’m smiling and shaking my head… rolling my eyes… tapping my watch… but they don’t see any non-verbal communication cuz their heads are buried in their papers… The instructor is sitting in the back of the room obviously getting annoyed at this presentation.  I’m watching over a month’s worth of preparation go down the drain along with our grade… So I’m thinkin, do I speak up and cut them off?  I couldn’t do it.  They’d think I ruined their individual grade… (Although I’d probably have been doing them a favor!)  So the room has now lost interest and is quickly falling asleep…. litterally.  I saw head bobbing.

When they finally shut up, the rest of the presentation was crammed into a small a space as we could fit it in.  We eliminated the 15 min. Q & A session at the end, and still ran class 5 minutes over.  So now everyone hates us for keeping them late.

ANYWAY, I immediately ran to the back of the room and apologized to the prof.  I explained that we had no clue they were going to do that and assumed it was understood they shouldn’t read straight from the paper, rather should have put effort into their section like everyone else had done.  I was going to say more, but she cut me off and said, “Well Brent, there’s a lot to be said for non-verbal communication, and I saw the faces of you and your group members… I know that it wasn’t planned.”  WHEW!

So I have no clue what grade I’m going to get… I have no clue what the group grade will be.  I’m glad it’s over!  AND I know what to expect from my fellow classmates and who NOT to put in charge of stuff… That was litterally the worst presentation disaster I’ve ever taken part in…. ever.  I just sat there and watched for 32 minutes… as they alienated that room from their surroundings and pushed them off into a state of dreaming.  I was watching a car crash in slow motion and kept wondering if the air bags would deploy or not.  ::sigh::  ah well.  It’s over.

OK, bedtime… it’s 4:40am. :-p  OH YEAH, one last note.  I stayed up with Sarah at the desk till 4am, and took a survey of the drunks coming in.  I asked them all their favorite color.  32 said blue.  13 said green.  and everything else was under 5 votes.  So if you have to guess someone’s favorite color… it’s probably blue…

Mood:  Destressing after tons-o-stress
Music:  Some acapella men’s chorus thing that the counting crows played before they came out… pitch black room, candles on stage… and really cool chorus vocals singing about pinball.