Exchange Program Presentation

In order to promote the program that I am participating in, the staff members running the exchange gave a presentation on Tuesday explaining its organization, application procedures, etc. They also invited students that had gone to the States last year as well as the CMU students currently in Aachen to give quick presentations on our experiences and to answer questions at the end. Christine and I agreed to attend and put a powerpoint together. We made sure to include he most essential details: Pittsburghese, Primanti Bros, and Dark Knight Rises filming locations. Since the students were interested in studying in America, we opted to present in English. We also opted not to practice beforehand. This...is not my typical way of giving a presentation. I usually rehearse until I have inadvertently created a script that I follow without variation. However, the day before, on only my second attempt ever, I successfully made a pasty without even measuring ingredients for the crust. If I could wing that, surely I could give a casual talk without preparing, right? Yes, that was my actual thought process.

It turns out, that parallel was not entirely off. Sure, I might have tried a bit too hard to make some points funny. and we talked for 15 minutes instead of the expected 10. Nevertheless, we won some honest laughs and didn't go nearly so long as the representatives from the UC Davis exchange. 30 minutes of hearing how delightful California weather is a bit much. The end of the presentations was when it became truly awkward. Perhaps it was because we could not help with application questions. Maybe our speaking English had scared them off. For whatever reason, when the attendees came up to ask questions, only two came to talk to CMU exchange participants, and both wanted to talk to the returned RWTH students. Christine and I just stood there feeling redundant. Ah well. An excuse to go to bed is an excuse to go to bed.