Different Names For The Same Thing

I'm a bit off today. Things just aren't running along like they usually do on a Thursday. In the forefront of my mind is my presentation I have to give tonight*. I don't think I am very good at giving presentations. Part of the reason is because, when I'm up there, I know noone wants to be listening to a presentation so then I want to make it short and sweet, but sometimes there are time requirements. And for a girl who can speak mighty quickly, that's a problem.

For my senior seminars (I gave two because I double majored), I had to give one 20 minute speech for music and one 35 minutes speech for biology. The biology one was first, and while I was excited for the subject (common injuries in tennis), I was not excited for the time requirement. After unsuccessfully trying to memorize our warm-up 15 minute speech, I decided to work really hard on the powerpoint and then wing it. So, I did. I didn't stay up all night before doing run-throughs like a lot of my classmates did. I showed up that day, no nerves whatsoever (well, after I asked how to correctly pronounce gastrocnemius because I had forgotten to previously) and just did it. I did okay, too. I remember telling my friend that when I'm giving a speech it's like I can't control my hand gestures, it's just too much in my already overwhelmed mind. So when I was explaining how lateral epicondilitis happens, I could feel my arms go into a backhand motion. I caught my friends eye and she smiled, which caused me to smile and the whole moment was incredibly hilarious but, unfortunately, I had to keep it together for like, 20 more minutes.

My music speech was cake in comparison. 20 minutes? PUHLEASE! I did mine on Shostakovich and From Jewish Folk Poetry, talking about what makes Jewish music sound Jewish and how he used those sounds in his pieces. I got bonus points for saying "Shostakovich" correctly so many times within a 20-minute span, ha! The funny part of that speech came when I had my required performance part of the speech. I decided to show off and play an example of Jewish music on my clarinet and part of From Jewish Folk Poetry on the flute. What I wasn't expecting was Dr. Long, the greatest music theorist in the world, pointing out to me later that I had, in fact, NOT played a B in my excerpt as I had stated. See, I explained a scale and how raising the Bb to a B made it sound "Jewish", but couldn't find an excerpt from anything to show this. I never expected anyone with crazy perfect pitch to prove me wrong!




In the picture, that's Shosty on the left and David Oistrakh, the violinist, on the right. A-dorable!

Todays presentation is a group effort and on education. Every group that has gone already has gone way over their time, so I am going to do what I can to be short and sweet. I really hope my group members don't show me up and come in with their parts memorized because I plan on winging it.

I seriously digressed from saying how my day is off to talking about college speeches. I hope that by the time I get home tonight, at 9 or so, that everything is back to normal.


XO,
SVR


*OK, that's a lie, but what are you going to do?