All in the Suit

This afternoon I'm giving a presentation at the U of Toledo on my meagre efforts to date at environmental service learning. Which amount to having composition classes write newsletter articles for a local environmental group.

I just finished writing the presentation. It's not great, but not embarrassing. I have no enthusiasm for it though. Mostly its a restatement of ideas that have been rattling around in my head since I wrote a paper on them for a graduate class nearly ten years ago (a paper I came very close to expanding into my dissertation). Next fall, I'll get to apply many of them in the course that I got the grant to develop (and which I'll soon get serious about actually developing). I ought to feel satisfied--it would appear that old ambitions are reaching fulfillment. But it feels more like old burdens are simply becoming more cumbersome. I'm trying to figure out why this is.

I hope the presentation goes OK. It's not great work by any means, but I'm going to wear a nice suit to give the presentation. That should divert attention from any intellectual or methodological shortcomings in the talk, right?