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I have been here at my desk for the better par of the day, attempting (without any success) to continue the case report that I have (thankfully) started working on yesterday.
But hey, at least I'm not lying on my bed snoozing the hours away. 😅
As the title implies, it's just so hard to motivate oneself under such soporific conditions, which is why I took a dose of caffeine this morning. The net result was that I didn't need to sleep, but I had to pee more often (as expected). 😅
And yet I was still unproductive. 😅😄😄
Which is why I'm blogging this down right now, to acclimatize myself to using the keyboard again as I struggle to complete this requirement before the weekend is over.
The rain has been on and off lately, contributing to a cool, relaxing climate that can easily lull your brain to sleep.. I just hope that the reported flooding around the metro resolves soon.
In the midst of my struggles with procrastination, I chanced upon this interesting TED talk by a brilliant 7-year-old girl who was talking about the impact of parental interactions with children during the critical period from infancy to at least age 5. Her talk (like most TED talks honestly) was short but highly informative. She spoke really well for her age, and was able to get her message across quite clearly. Here is the link below for those who want to watch it:
https://www.ted.com/talks/molly_wright_how_every_child_can_thrive_by_five
Watching that talk reminded me of what I aspire for when I give lectures.. To be able to give a highly informative lecture without boring the audience or causing them to tune out because I made it too long or high-falluting. I understand that aiming for simplicity is not as easy as it sounds when you are talking about academic activities as is typical in the medical field, but what is the point of giving a talk if the people you are lecturing to are unable to take away anything from it? I think a lot of people get too wrapped up in what they want to say, that they tend to forget the people that they wish to convey the information to. Now, this is not a knock against the people who speak at conventions, as I have attended my own fair share of fascinating talks by brilliant speakers. Sadly though, there are those few that fall through the cracks and give a barely understandable talk fettered by too much information. The person is always brilliant to say the least, and is typically a top content expert in the field, so the mastery of the content being conveyed is unquestionable..
However, mastery of content does not necessarily equate to mastery of delivery, and far too often, if you are not in the upper ranks of the academic society, you may only grasp a bare minimum of what the speaker is trying to get across, and I'm not even taking into account those presentations loaded with barely intelligible figures and graphs that may only be decipherable by the presentor.
Please don't get me wrong, I am by no means putting myself above these speakers, because I am quite sure that next to them, I am just a potato. The point I am trying to get across is that the ability to really teach well is a gift, and not everyone has it. Being a remembered as a good teacher, not necessarily in a formal academic setting, is something that I am really aspiring for. There is no greater reward at the end of a lecture, than when you realize that your audience was actually able to pick up a thing or two from what you had shared. 😉
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