And I hereby present...

... the worst-prepared presentation I've ever given!

Yesterday I gave a draft presentation to one of the groups I've been working with here at Shell. It was... to put things mildly... not well prepared. The reason: My project was changed a month into my internship and I completely (and utterly. And completely. And utterly) missed what was expected of me. In my naivité, I thought I was supposed to do and deliver one thing, whereas it turns out I was supposed to do and deliver that thing, and then all these other things as well. This is entirely my fault, for not communicating effectively with the people I'm working for and for not thinking carefully about things and asking myself questions such as: "Well, why would Shell be interested in this product if it's not accompanied by these other products?" But coming from academia, I'm trained to want to know all kinds of different things without always needing a solid reason for wanting to know them. Knowledge for knowledge's sake. I implicitly assumed that's what I was dealing with here. I wasn't expecting the Business Applicability to pop up. As I said, naive.

So. Now I have ... let me count... Saturday, Sunday and Monday to prepare for the Final Presentation. And a truckload of things to do before then, that I should have dedicated, say, 2 or 3 weeks to. And at the same time I'm so tired that I zombied around all yesterday afternoon and have spent most of today sleeping.

Well, what the hell. As my friend Paula says, you can't do any better than your best. And I'm too old for allnighters anyway :)

So, to kick off the flurry of activity that will surround me the next few days, I'm heading for a) Starbucks, for a coffee and a 5-pm lunch, and b) my LYS, where I'll meet the regulars over knitting and pizza for one last time. Mildly pathetic, that's me ;)