Wake Up Kids

I orginally wrote a post the other night but forgot to save it and lost it for all of posterity. It contained lots of fun (that's for you to decide) links. In a nutshell, last weekend (the 11-13) I traveled back to the land of the Cuyahoga. I brought with me a female companion (psst...that's her on the right) and introduced to to Cleveland, Ohio. We spent some time over at the campus of ol' Case Reserve. We checked out the new dorms and I showed her Spartan Stadium. Upon walking into said stadium she remarked "You call this a football stadium?" Her only experiences of American Football are attending two games in the other Spartan Stadium. Quite a difference. By the way, for you Case readers, they've having a Throwback Weekend in February featuring uniforms of the Red Cats and Rough Riders. I should contact Uni Watch.

In other happenings, I had a group presentation today. We've been sitting through these each day for the past 3 weeks or so. All the groups have been very monotone, lack excitement, and didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. They would go up there and talk for a half hour going from one group member to the other. Very unimpressive. Being the lone grad student in the class, I made sure my group (me and 3 girls) was up to the challenge. Our topic was "Sports and Media," and we decided to have some fun with it. We did a mock ESPN SportsCenter. Myself and one of the girls were the co-anchors and the other two were "guests with expert knowledge" who we did Q & A sessions with. This was augmented by a PowerPoint presentation that featured audio and video video clips. We also had slides that flashed "Applause" after one of our "guests" had finished. Given the topic, the style we did it in was all quite appropriate. Some of the things we featured: voice inflection (what a concept!), talking between group members (vs just going through each member and them presenting their topic), and we dressed up! Yeah I like to look good for presentations, but people would go up there with sweats on. C'mon folks, get with the game.

So yeah after the presentation our professor always asks for positive, negative, and positive feedback (she calls this the "feedback sandwhich," get it? get it?). Lots of positive feedback and she told us we were "marvelous." Basically, we kicked ass. To keep the whole sports metaphor going, it is akin to a competition where participate one at a time (think diving, gymnastics, ice skating, slam-dunk contests). We set the bar so high that the other students (athletes) just responded in disbelief and thought "how did they do that?" and sat there, deflated. There is a look in a competitors eyes when he knows he still has a shot...there is also the look when they see how well someone else does that they are now competing for 2nd place. We'll see if wednesday's group takes any cues from us.

A couple of minor things went wrong. I had sweet ESPN font for all the headings of our slides. Since the font was not installed on the computer that we used, it was not visible. :(
We also had a clip from the 1972 Munich Games in which we talked about how sports media can negatively impact real news events. The DVD was not cued up properly and instead of waiting for things to get resolved, we (me and my coanchor) said "we're having some technical difficulties and will move on." We did a good job on the improv. And to close it out I said "Keep it classy KIN 445."

Turkey Day is 3 days away. I. Cannot. Wait.