----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 8:29
PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteorite
presentations (sorry if it's long!)
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
