1st Lecture

Kathy (my supervisor) went off for a conference today, and needed some people to cover her lectures for this week.

Therefore, (like the comic) I ended up giving my very first lecture this afternoon, which was a Basic Metabolism lecture on fatty acid degradation and fatty acid synthesis.

Although I was quite nervous, thankfully (unlike the comic) I didn't have any nightmares last night. Heh. In preparation, I looked through the slides for my lecture, as well as the slides for the next lecture, so that I wouldn't overlap the details for both of the lectures. It was a good thing I did so too... because I ended up giving both of them anyway :)

Initially during the lecture, I was rather nervous, but the nervousness disappeared after a while, and I started to actually enjoy it. However, having gotten into the momentum, I covered all my lecture materials rather quickly... very quickly... too quickly :) I finished my lecture material in 20 min... and it was supposed to be a 1 hour lecture (oh no oh no oh no! )

I paused, and asked the students, 'Am I going too quickly for you?' (obvious question... :) A few heads nodded.

'Okay, I'll take it slower' ... then continued on to the next lecture (and silently thanked God for looking through it earlier). This time, I went through the material more slowly and leisurely, pausing occasionally at some of the slides that I hadn't prepared before. A few of the students asked questions along the way, which were all rather straightforward, and I managed to answer most of them (again, unlike the comic :) . I also had an 'ultimate solution' in case of any difficult questions : ask them to look up more information about it, and go through it in their tutorial groups (while hoping very hard that the student doesn't come from one of my tute classes. Heh. ) But thankfully, I didn't need to do that today :)

Before she left last Friday, Kathy showed me the buttons and controls for the lecture theatre, and she remarked, "Oh, and this screen over here, if you look up there in the corner (pointing to a glass window at the back of the lecture theatre), that's where they'll be videotaping for the lecture videos, so don't worry if you see yourself in the screen every now and then. "

Videotaping?! No one had mentioned anything about videotaping !! Aaaaargh!

Apparently, she hadn't mentioned it because she'd guessed that was exactly how we'd respond :P Heh. Most people know that I get nervous standing in front of a crowd of people... let alone being videotaped while standing in front of a crowd of people... gahhh...

Overall, I think the lecture went quite alright (apart from covering 1 - 4/5 lectures in that 1 hour slot), and it was actually much like giving a really long presentation. The funny thing was that the class had actually been 1 lecture behind schedule before that, so now that I'd covered 2 lectures in one session, they were back on schedule for their lectures. Haha.


So, the experience was quite an interesting one, and the people at the lecture were also really nice and encouraging... Hopefully, they've gained something useful from the lecture (and not a headache, I hope ;)

Crystal will be covering Thursday's lecture, and I'll be joining Kathy tomorrow, to present a poster at the Aquafin CRC conference, which will be held in the Barossa Valley (for 3 days of talks and seminars related to aquaculture). All my things are packed, and ready to leave at 7.30 am tomorrow morning to get there *wince* . Off to more fishy business :) ...