Guest Lecture

Before leaving for a conference, my adviser asked me to guest-lecture for his undergraduate course on Prosthetic Devices. I was excited. As much as I enjoy lecturing, there's no doubt that I have room for improvement, and opportunities to practice are few and far between.


I've given 15-minute presentations at conferences, and I've spoken for 90 minutes to high schoolers. This would be my first lecture to a highly trained, albeit inexpert, audience. Worse, these were undergrads, a species notorious for apathy, inattention, and an aversion to personal hygeine. As I said, I was excited, much in the way that one gets excited before a safari or a bungee jump.

Oh, and my adviser had told the students that nothing I said would be on the test. So I had that going for me.

It's been six and a half years since I graduated from high school. I'm in my thirteenth semester of heartbreakingly boring lectures given by mind-numblingly monotonous speakers. I may not be the best thing to happen to lecterns since Winston Churchill, but I've seen what it takes to be the worst, and I recognize how to avoid the pitfalls.

We've all had that professor whose idea of oration involves Powerpoint slides with too much text, all of which he drones, word for word. This professor often assumes that his audience is well-enough versed in the basics that can dive right into the big words. He always has one more slide than can fit in the allotted time, so he never stops to breathe, let alone allow questions.

I hate that professor. Don't be that professor.

The best speakers, in my not-even-a-little-bit-humble opinion, are the ones who are excited about material, or at least know how to fake it. They vary their pitch in a way that conveys emotion (gasp!), they pause after important points (wow!), and they even crack the occasional joke (heaven forbid!!!).

A good lecture isn't a public reading of a research paper; it's a play. It's a a one-man show, a long, passionate monologue. The audience may not be moved, but they should at least be budged.

Before my lecture, a well-wisher said "break a leg". How odd, to say such a thing to a lecturer! It fits my philosophy, though, doesn't it?

I put on a show, too. For example, it started as follows: "This lecture is titled Upper Extremity Prostheses, but only because it seemed wildly inappropriate to call it The Sound of One Hand Clapping". That wasn't the last of my jokes, nor was it the most offensive. They ate it up.

There were about a dozen powerpoint slides that I'd prepared, with demonstrative graphs and a video for good measure. The file was on a flash drive, which was in my pocket. On a whim, I did the entire lecture from an outline, using a whiteboard and markers.

That's how good I am.

Next time I'm giving a lecture, you'd better be there at the end with a standing ovation and maybe a bouquet. I promise you, I will break a leg, in the sense that I'll be taking a deep, grandiose, Victorian-era bow. It'll be awesome.