Posted in Me

Last night was my presentation for my class on "Methods of Teaching Romance Languages."  My topic was "Teaching Foreign Languages to Students with Dyslexia."  I have no trouble speaking in front of people, so I was never actually worried about that, it was the technology surrounding the whole event that got me so worked up that I feel like I ran a marathon yesterday!

Most people did a Power Point presentation, but some just used a word document or whatever you call it.  I played around with PowerPoint for about 5 minutes and decided that I just didn't have time for that.  I had never used it before and I wasn't going to learn now.  However, I did have to use my husband's jump drive to put the document on the computer on campus so it could be projected on the screen, and I had never used a jump drive before.

I have been working on this presentation for several weeks on and off, but on Tuesday night it was crunch time.  I typed up all my notes and had way too much material.  So then I cut it down more yesterday morning.  I had emailed my professor to ask him a question about citations and he didn't respond until just before I had to leave to go to teach at the charter school.  I had been going to make copies of my handout at school, but then I decided that I needed to change a few things, so I didn't.

When I got home from teaching, I made the changes based on what my professor said and made my bibliography.  I thought about going back over to my charter school to make the copies, but 1) I didn't know if anyone would still be there and I don't have a key and 2) it seemed unethical to go over there for the express purpose of making copies that aren't for the school.  So I didn't.

I drove up to town and went to a shipping store that had a copier, but the copier was scratched and they looked horrible so I left without my copies.  I now had one hour until my class.  I drove to the post office but the copier there only took change.  That doesn't really work when you need to make 15 copies of a 6 page document!  On my way to town, I had the thought, was the corrected version of the document saved to the jump drive or the main computer at home?  I called my son from the library, and he said that it probably was on the jump drive, but to just use one of the computers at the library to try it.  So I tried.  Nothing happened.  Nothing was like what Robert had told me it would be with the jump drive.  So I decided, I don't have time for this and I removed the jump drive from the computer.  Then I was worried that I might have wiped everything off the jump drive!

I drove towards the university and wasted 10 minutes driving around a new shopping center to see if there was a Staples or Office Max or something, but there wasn't.  But I did see a yellow Lotus with great acceleration, so if I cared about cars at all, that might have made it worth it.

I then decided to just drive to campus and use the copiers in the library.  I got to the library at about 5:40 and my class started at 6.  That should be plenty of time to make copies, right?  Wrong.

Apparently there was only one copier that took money, and the others required your ID card, which I have never bothered to get.  And someone was using the one copier, and someone else was waiting.  I left to go use the ATM (the only thing that DID actually work!)  When I got back, no one was using the copier.  But it wouldn't take a twenty, so I had to get change from the desk.  There was a big warning label on it that they didn't recommend using the document feeder on top.  So I decided to make one copy the old-fashioned way, and then use that copy in the document feeder to make the rest. But, every four or five copies, the copier would jam.  I had to get the girl from the desk to come over and fix it 3 times.  She said, "Well, it's been used a lot in the last hour."  And yes, it was definitely 6 PM by now.

So then she revealed to me that they can give me a guest card, which I can take over to some machine and add money to and then use it in the other 2 copiers.  I was about ready to strangle her - she couldn't have told me this before?????  So that is what I did.  I put in one sheet at a time and made 15 copies of it.  While the machine was copying, I was collating and dreaming about the wonderful copier at work, which would have done the job in less than a minute, and they would have been all collated and I would only have had to staple them and go on my merry way.

While copying the bibliography, I ran out of money on the guest card, so I decided that all of my fellow students did not need copies of that.  I stapled them all and booked to class.  While I was stapling, I realized that I had made the same mistake I made earlier in the semester - I didn't type my name onto the document!  I was mentally kicking myself, and briefly considered trying to come up with some kind of cover sheet but dismissed that idea quickly. I was on the verge of tears over to my class. I missed the entire first presentation.  I was so annoyed at all the time I had wasted searching for a copier and making the copies.

But, even though I had my copies now, there was still all the anxiety related to the jump drive issue!  My presentation was second to last, and we took a short break before it, so the girl who was going after me wanted to put her PowerPoint on the computer too.  So she did the whole jump drive thing for me, which was wonderful.  But it took her like 4 tries to get it to work, and I was standing there thinking, "I know I ruined my husband's jump drive!"

I had some examples I was showing during my presentation and there is an overhead monitor thing that will project it onto the screen so everyone can see, but I didn't even bother with that.  I just did it the old-fashioned way and held it up!

It is really amazing how academia has changed in the last 10 years.  Everything is so technology-oriented, and I am stuck in using the computer as a typewriter!  I mean, I do use the Internet now too, but this is too much! Although I did find a free bibliography website that I used.  You just put in the information and it formats it and alphabetizes it, so that was helpful. 

By the way, I slept very well last night!