Just returning from the Lilly
Conference on College Teaching, the topic of PREPARATION arose in my sessions
and in conversations over those amazing meals. You have to draw the line
somewhere in the time and effort you spend preparing for class or a presentation
at Lilly. The problem is that my 2 sessions on “Humor & Multimedia” and “Evidenced-Based
PowerPoint” were intended to extend your preparation life as you now know it.
Adding humor, animation, music, images, and YouTube clips to your PowerPoints complicates
everything and requires much more time than you probably have. So what are you
supposed to do?
BERK 2.0 PERSPECTIVE ON PREPARATION
In my 30th year of teaching at Johns Hopkins, I was working 90-100 hours, 7 days a week, to meet obsessive-compulsive requirements. During my last 5.389 retirement years, I've worked 70-80. I bet you're thinking: "Are you CRAZY?" Probably.
EVIN LYSECHEK & BOB FOSSE
I relate to some very unusual people.
One is Evin Lysechek, who won the Gold Medal in Men’s Figure Skating at the
Vancouver Olympics. He had a reputation for working harder and practicing longer
than anyone else. A second is Bob Fosse, iconic, awarding-winning Broadway
director and choreographer, who was relentless in rehearsing his dancers. He
required dancers to practice the dance routines over a hundred times. A dancer
became ONE WITH THE DANCE. The dance was natural and reflexive; he or she didn’t
have to think about the steps. They were automatically part of them.
HOW DO YOU PREPARE?
So how should you prepare? Is your
presentation part of you or someone else? Do you struggle to remember what
comes next? Do you need cues? My next blog will present the challenge. Stay
tuned.
COPYRIGHT ©
2011 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
We’re less than 2 weeks away. I’m sooo excited. I’m finally going to replace the 2 rear tires on my SUV. WAIT! That’s not that exciting. It’s the Super Bowl! “WROOONNG AGAIN!"
It’s the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver! Where have you been? In a Peruvian rainforest? And this February 12th, guess what? The organizers don’t have to ship in dump-truck-loads of snow for the skiing events from a neighboring country like Seattle.
OLYMPIC SCHEDULE
I love the Winter Olympics—“the thrill of victory, the agony of frigid temps!” Hand warmers galore! It starts with the stimulus package-like, AIG CEO bonus-type, wastefully-expensive, opening ceremonies that last for 3 days, except in Siberia, where, due to the time-zone difference and the excessive use of commas in this sentence, it lasts 3 months. The colorful parade of athletes and Olympic flame-lighting are followed by the closing ceremonies with a few events and buckets of commercials in between.
Unfortunately, this spectacle only rolls around every 16 years, except when it falls on the Jewish New Year or Kwanza. In those cases, it’s rescheduled during spring break in an extremely cold country like Antarctica.
OLYMPIC HIGHLIGHTS
My fave dozen events this year are the following:
• 8m snowball fight
• 2-man windshield scrape
• 15.75m snow shovel toss
• 6-man bobsleigh with only guys named bob
• ladies 500m taser speed skating
• 10km jet-propelled ski jump
• individual men’s Olympic village cafeteria-tray luge
• Whistler Blackcomb Mountain alpine snow-eating contest
• women’s round robin boulder curling
• men’s pairs Super E-F-G downhill skiing
• psycho-aerial men’s drainpipe snowboarding
• 4 x 7.5 x MC square km women’s biathlon with 81mm mortars
It is so exciting to watch event after event, while trying to pronounce the names of the athletes. Eventually, the star athletes become deeply etched in our memory along with the theme song “Ode to Frosty the Snowman.”
Tomorrow I’ll continue this rollicking romp through the 2010 Olympic events and, maybe, just maybe, get to the point of the blog title.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
