presentation fiasco
Safe to say, there is no love lost between me and E.C.
Our group was prepared for the group presentation on Monday night, bogus and degrading though it was. We spent hours refining powerpoints, debating about language, and proofreading the slides. We made active stylistic decisions, and were in a position to do relatively well, under the circumstances.
Monday night, the plan was to take R's flashdrive, which had the presentation at its freshest, and download it quickly and get going. If that didn't work, we all had an email with the freshest version attached. Fail fucking SAFE.
We thought.
So imagine our surprise when E marches up to the computer in her little black miniskirt and knee-hi bitchboots, and proceeds to publically dick around with the sftp client. H. tried to help her. she shooed him away. R tried to insist that we go with plan A and use the damn flashdrive. She said, "no, I've got it." We stood back and watched in horror as she pulled up an earlier draft (ugly slides with gray and white mini-striping that blinds you)and rather than take two more minutes to resolve the problem....shotguns the presentation.
She hmmed and uhhhed through the introduction, and I was embarrassed for her.
R and A were prepared for a different set of slides, but still did considerably well with the old set. When it was my turn, the slide was out of order, but I managed to recover my wits and present what was visible to the whole class anyway. The next slide was rife with typos... for fuck's sake, there were EMPTY PARENTHESES!!! gasp gasp. I apologized for them. I stated we had an early draft. I got on with it.
THe next slide was Blank.
Emily interrupts me saying that oh yes, this WAS an early draft, she was sooooooooo sorry. OMG.
I had the sense to print the right slides before class, and they were in my hands. I looked at them. I looked at the class. I said, "I guess I'll just present without the slides."
H said, "keep talking."
I did. I did well. I didn't notice that the screen behind me was a profusion of blips and flipping screens... I just kept on talking.
R. got our correct slides up. I picked up with the next slide like they'd been there all along.
We finished. And I breathed.