My turn arrives in one month. This OLLI class runs about twelve sessions, with a different person presenting each time. I gave my brief overview in the first class. The instructor schedule assigned my class as the midpoint.
By now, I should be pretty proficient at this. My mental, medical, and Jewish journeys have taken me to the podium many times. Some informal, like medical residents presenting a case. Others quite formal, like Medical Grand Rounds or presentations at my synagogue's AKSE Academy. Progress has moved ahead from Kodachromes created by medical illustrators to PowerPoints made by me. Sometimes I create a written script. As proficiency accumulated, I've let the PowerPoint written slides serve as my prompts.
Rarely do I start with full familiarity. I have a grasp of the medical topic or the background for a Jewish topic. This time I have the basic concepts of what I want to convey about NYC, the OLLI Course topic. Fifteen minutes each about city workers, vagrants, vendors, and diplomats, though the vagrants merit more time with a reduction in the time allotment to the others. I like history, and often sort my remarks in their historical contexts. But I chose my current topic, a deviation from the other eleven this cycle, because everyone in the class has a bimodal connection. As Seniors with some childhood connection to Metro NY, we all had reason to putter around The City in our youth. We all have events that periodically bring us back, whether tourism, Broadway, or relatives. Then differs from now. Who comprises the audience matters considerably.
I am making slow but steady progress, not far behind my completion timeline. Keep it interesting, keep it relevant. Work on fluency.
I've done this many times before. Struggle a while. Then it gels.
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