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Hello list. It's very active today, I like that.
Last night I gave a meteorite presentation at the San Diego Lapidary Society. It
most certainly was not the first presentation I've ever given in front of
people, but it was the first one about meteorites. Their general meeting
was called to order at 7pm, and they went about their business. You know, Robert
Rules of order kind of stuff, and a raffle. It was quite pleasant actually. Most
of the membership is quite a bit older than myself and my girlfriend. One kind
older gentleman came over and told me great stories about the meteorites he's
found. Other members came up to me with three different rocks and asked if they
were meteorites, unfortunately they were not and I had to be the one to break
the bad news. I finally got to speak around 8:15pm and was quite nervous. I made
up a packet of text that I wrote with graphics, images, and other statistics and
passed them out. I also brought about 50 specimens to show around and
some moldavites and tektites. I really was geared up to give a really great
talk, I had already visualized it in my head. So I introduced myself, and
quickly warned them that:" I have a tendency to go off on tangents and never
come back. Oh, and I'm longwinded at times, so I'll be sticking to the script"
So I was very nervous all of a sudden and started to stammer and forget the
words and had to begin reading. I told them about the beginnings of the solar
system, accretion, asteroids, oxygen isotopes, fall statistics, identifying
meteorites, classification with actual samples of each class, chemical make -up,
Prospects for life elsewhere (alh84001, murchison, Allende,etc.), then I told
them about the new large object that was just announced on Monday. Wow was I
imparting the goods on these people. Then I looked up and people were nodding
off, the people in the back had already snuck out. I had been talking for about
45 minutes. I could feel that hollow pit in my stomach becoming an abysmal void
and I was getting sucked down. I could feel the beads of sweat forming on my
bald head, my girlfriend was staring right at me. I wrapped in up quickly, and
asked if there were questions. The few people who hadn't snuck out already had
plenty of questions, and some were quite tricky. One woman right up front told
me about her grandfather getting his haystack burnt down by a meteor. I didn't
know what to say. I blurted out "Really, how interesting!" It doesn't quite seem
possible to me, but I couldn't tell her that. I think it was well past there bed
time, because after I ended the talk they politely clapped and got the hell out
of there. I knew as soon as I sat down in the car what had gone wrong. I'm very
hard on myself, very critical. My girlfriend told me what a great job I did,
which is nice and I think she was trying to be nice. If you are this far down
into this diatribe you've probably already got me pegged. I'm a nervous talker,
and I'm longwinded. Strike one. I hadn't pictured the right audience in my
pre-visualization. Strike two. I had mistaken a meteorite talk with a meteorite
lecture. Strike three. When I was falling asleep last night I couldn't help
thinking that I could know so much more on the topic. I now realize that all
that information is not the important thing. The important thing is
that you are entertaining the audience and creating an experience that they
will remember. If your lucky they will learn something. I'm going to try and
keep those things in mind next time. I'll try to be more show and less
tell. Hopefully others of you have had these types of experiences and would
share them. Maybe some of you can offer some tips, or criticisms. Perhaps some
of you will tell me to please not write long emails and send them to this list.
Anyway, I hope sharing was a good idea.- Edward
Edward R. Hodges
IMCA # 4173
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- Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorite presentations (sorry if it... Edward R. Hodges
