Eye of the Tiger

Sometimes I worry. I worry that there will come a point in my life when I'm no longer able to register excitement and fear. LIke a slinky that's been stretched beyond its elastic limit, I feel like I've just been on an adrenaline bender. My talk is over, it was a triumph, and now I feel like I need to sleep for 100 years.

The play-by-play:

When my alarm went off this morning, my first thought was "crap...where am I?...oh yeah, Chile...Pucon...conference...my talk is today!!!" and my second thought was "Nope. No way. Never. Where's the bus station?"

But I rallied, put on my extreme talk outfit (thanks Megan!) and my game face. As the time grew closer, my gut-gripping anxiety grew, graphically it looked something like this:



With Hours Since Waking on the x-axis, and Gut-Wrenches on the y-axis.


There were probably about 40 people in the room, to give you an idea of the demographic:

5 graduate students, 35 faculty
4 female, 36 male


Many nationalities were represented, but I'd say about one third of the room's inhabitants were Korean.

I struggled through the first sentence, but I very quickly hit my stride and felt great. It was strange, it actually felt very natural. Standing there telling people about the result felt like a very normal and comfortable thing to do.

Immediately after the talk was over, I had that weak-in-the-knees feeling you get after a serious adrenaline surge, but I was smiling ear to ear. Lots of people approached me to ask questions and give insights, and I got a lot of positive feedback. It turns out, this sums of triangular numbers problem is something that a lot of people have a keen interest in.

So now, my friends, we can begin phase II of this trip: Adventure for Adventure's sake!

<3