half past nomad

I haven’t really checked my email the entire week. I’ve ignored reading my regular blogs, I’ve even ignored my own blog. I’ve been busy.

This entire week has been nothing but an intense zoomed in focused class session. Thursday morning, I wake up, half nauseous, barely slept. The presentation but a few hours away, my nervousness already at full throttle. I think. I prove myself wrong.

This is Dr Karl’s class project. We’ve spent the entire semester working on this, the business summary and our proposal solution. And this morning, this Thursday morning, was the full circle to our work. We present our solution, as a company called TechFuSion, to an audience of almost 40 professionals from the field. At the end, a 15 minute Q&A session where we get grilled who want to test the authenticity, originality, and actual feasibility of our project. Our entire class grade depends almost solely on these 35 minutes, and all the work that has led up to this point. It depends on how these professionals grade us.

I’m not a nervous fella. I’m too foolishly overconfident to be that. But today my hands shook uncontrollably, a panic I had not known to exist before. Conversations a blur, images a forgotten memory, we waited and waited and waited to be called to present our material.

We paced the neighboring room in the early morning, a beautiful day outside, a tension a pressure a panic an intensity inside that followed us around like a bad nimbus cloud, waiting to break its thresh hold any minute now.
Any minute now.

It’s our turn. Go.

We nailed our presentation exactly how we wanted to. No regrets, no wishes lost, no thing. We left the room pumped up on a natural high of success God given, screaming shouting yelling finally. It was a good team of people to work with, and we have stories for a lifetime. Alhamdulilah. We even went and bought our graduation gowns right after, babbling bubbling fizzing with excitement, with satisfaction, with closure.

We did not, however, win the award for overall best presentation. No, that instead went to Synery Solutions. And I’m thrilled for them, I’m thrilled my friends won, I’m proud of them, of the work that was appreciated by the audience as well.

However, we didn’t lose either. I’m more sure of myself, of my work that professionals came up and said they admired. I thought to myself initially ‘I’m sorry sir, you must have me mistaken for another team‘. But as it turns out, we did real good and the praise was a 100% genuine; we won the respect of our peers, our professors, our colleagues.

We won our own respect.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2003 at 2:10 am and is filed under General Lee.