Friday, May 05, 2006

thinking out loud


At a practice practice jobtalk that I gave early this week, where I bedazzled my audience with a slideshow to the extent of which has never been seen on this side of the Pacific, I was taught a very important lesson about giving presentations.

Apparently, or so my friends tell me, if you're trying to be convincing, especially to people who you eventually want to hire you, it's not a very good idea to say in the middle of a speech anything along the following lines: "While I know that history should usually be grounded in empirical fact... I have to admit that this particular chapter is based on pure conjecture."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

con·jec·ture (kn-jkchr) n.
1. Inference or judgment based on inconclusive or incomplete evidence; guesswork; 2. A statement, opinion, or conclusion based on guesswork: as in "The audience made various conjectures about the meaning of her presentation, and whether or not she had any idea of what she was talking about."