I'm pretty terrible at giving presentations. The only time people say that I've done it well is when I feel like I've been feigning confidence and have been acting it out the whole time. It never feels sincere. I never feel like I know what I'm talking about. You know how that saying by Socrates goes:
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing"
Yeah, I take that a bit too seriously sometimes. I doubt the extent of my knowledge far too often.
I've not been preparing very much for the our talk on Tanzania. Things like this make me worry. So I put it off the whole week, hanging out with Canadians, reading through lectures, ANYTHING to not look at the presentation. The fact that it was going to be in Chem Eng LT1 didn't help much - the last time I spoke there things just went horribly horribly wrong.
But secretly I knew I had a lot to say about it. It's an experience that the audience wouldn't have - nothing I could have to say could be incorrect. With only two hours to go, I finally went through it with Tom a couple of times, and faced the music.
Yesterday's presentation went off without a hitch. We generated a fair amount of interest, and we rewarded ourselves with plenty of homemade cake afterwards! One of which Matthew and Mei Wan kindly made for us.
And it tasted A-mazing. [edit] Cake solves everyone's problems. Socrates looks like he could use some cake. [/edit]
3 comments:
i like the quote as well but i think he made a circular argument lol. the fact that he knows nothing, actually means he knows something- which is that he knows nothing!
its like asking whether god, being all powerful, can create something which he himself cannot break? paradoxical indeed.
pardon me, musings on boring saturday night. hehe :)
btw, cake looks awesome!!! why did they decide to open the bakery only after i've left. sob sob
the cake was soooo yummy. I could have eaten the whole lot. But I didn't, of course, ahem.
yeah it's a bit of a circular argument if you take it literally. But in a sense I find it true. If you ever assume that you know all there is to know, there will always be something that will jump up and surprise you. It will knock you off your perch as it were. So you'd have to be infinitely wise to discover that in fact you know nothing at all (relative to the limited knowledge out there).
I think the point I take most from it is that anyone who thinks they know everything is unlikely to be a wise person at all.
About God, that's a bit of a pickle. I would say that if he could make something he couldn't break, he wouldn't make it. Just because :p
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