I HATE 681 SEMINAR

So as a second year graduate student I am supposed to give a HUGE 40-45 minute literature seminar for the chemistry department. I thought I was a good public speaker, but in the past year or so I have found out that I am not.

I have put in some good work in the presentation. Almost half of it is done, but it was the easy part, the introduction and background information. Now I have to start working on the important stuff from the literature I have read. I am giving this presentation March 29th, so I really have plenty of time to finish it. But my PI would like to see a somewhat finish version of the presentation in about a week! I have barely done any work on the second half and I still need to finish the first half.

I swear I have been so lazy about working on this presentation. There is a lot of researchy stuff that I would so much rather do. Also people who are considering coming to Texas A&M for graduate school are coming to visit this weekend and I am a mentor and my PI wants a new poster! And to top it off the deadline for a travel fellowship was today so I had to write an abstract, write a paragraph essay, and fill out the application. My PI is a little crazy and I am not the best writer, so he had to check it twice to make sure it was good enough to have his name associated with it. On a quick side note, I will be going to the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston during the month of August to give a 20 minute presentation on my current research. Super exciting, I am becoming a real scientist.

I know I am making a million excuses. Everything research wise that I needed to order and do were done today. So the good news is I think for the next week I can take a break from research and work almost solely on the presentation. I hope I can get through this, graduate students every year get through this, I WILL TOO!