Kirk Kittell was here

A few weeks ago I gave my introductory Toastmasters speech. I wanted to capture that speech and write it for you. I nailed the presentation because that's what I do. Instead of the whole five-minute speech, here are my notes on back of a business card¹.

Allow me to step out of character (because I don't like to brag and I don't like people that brag): that business card is the only set of notes I need. I practice by using the outline, but I leave the rest open for creation on the fly. That card represents about seven or eight minutes of speaking, which I pared down to five during the speech as I figured out what the audience wanted to hear. I gave up on trying to write the speech in full here. What I said in person was a one time only event. I don't even remember most of it.

Let me tell you what it's like, even if I can't tell you what it was. On stage I am a different person. You wouldn't recognize me if you knew me elsewhere. It's almost schizophrenic. My everyday persona is awkward, ungainly, uninteresting. My onstage persona is garrulous, friendly, confident. I like him better. He's more interesting. I should hire him to be me full time.

Time slows down when I'm on stage. I wonder if that is what it feels like to be a talented musician or athlete. I wonder if Deron Williams feels the game in slow motion, giving him an advantage over lesser basketball players who feel the game at real speed. I can only wonder. In my simulated slow motion I become aware of cues from the audience and I feel like I have extra time to react. I can casually sort through different words and phrases -- like thumbing through a rack of albums at a used record store -- and come back with the one I want without losing any time. It feels amazing. All I need is a few prompts and I can construct the rest of the speech from the laughs, grimaces, surprised gapes, and hanging silences of the audience.

My speech was a meta-speech. It was a presentation about how I do presentations. The idea developed in December when I was planning to meet a few old friends from Ingersoll Scout Reservation. Offhandedly I mentioned to Joe that I talk about "The Banana Song" in job interviews. He asked how I could do that in a professional setting. As you might guess from the title, "The Banana Song" is a silly song. It doesn't conjure an image of selling yourself as a reliable engineer, does it? It is one of the many ridiculous ways we kept Scouts entertained at camp. It involves loud, stupid singing -- yelling, really -- on a stage in front of crowd of people you don't know. It involves dancing -- jumping around, at least -- and doing it with such enthusiasm that you can get a hot, humid, mosquito-filled amphitheater full of restless Scouts and stodgy Scoutmasters to dance and jump and yell and sing with you. It is a strange thing of beauty.

So, how does "The Banana Song" fit into an engineering job interview?

In a job interview for a technical position, it is customary for the interviewer to ask: Are you comfortable making presentations to other people? (It's an important question. Engineers are not noted for their ability to communicate with other humans.)

Easy. I tell them that once you've sung "The Banana Song" in front of 250 strangers, every other presentation is simple. Now you know.

¹ The red "KV" stands for the invocation I like to give to start off a speech. I stole it from the opening of the Book of Bokonon in Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut: "All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies."

2009-12-22: This post was a featured post on Brazen Careerist

In August, I set two goals: one based on performance, a time to beat in a 5 km race; the other based on preparation, a practice schedule for the GMAT. As it happened -- "As it was meant to happen," Bokonon would say -- it would take a second effort on both accounts to get it right.

The first goal was to beat 19:00 in a 5 km race by the end of October. The second goal was to practice regularly for the GMAT in September: one hour a day during the week, two hours a day on weekends.

Preparing for these two activities was supposed to be cooperative. I have rarely been disciplined at studying, but I do understand the relationship between practice and performance in athletics. So I was going to use athletic discipline to enable academic discipline. I was going to hack my brain. So to speak.

This is how it turned out.

Take one.

My first shot at the exam in September went well, but... it wasn't a comfortably high score. It probably would have gotten me in, but... maybe not. Just like old times, I let the math section intimidate me, then I swaggered through the verbal section. I wanted a better score, something with clout for the admissions committee, so I signed up for a second try in November.

On the running side, the tuneup race on 27 September went well -- a 19:31 in the Jack Kerouac 5K. I was on the mark to beat 19:00 at the Salem Witch City 5K on 25 October. On the morning of the Salem race, I woke up late. Then I drove the wrong direction. Twice. The result was that I got to Salem with just enough time to park, tie my shoes, run to the disassembled registration table with my entry form, and then run to the starting line just before the race started. Utterly stupid. It was a beautiful day on a beautiful, almost flat course, and I blew it by not getting there early enough to warm up. I ran 19:06 from a cold start -- seven seconds off.

Take two.

The following Sunday, 1 November, I arrived an hour early for the Genesis Battlegreen 5K in Lexington. This course was not as favorable as the Salem course. There was a steep, momentum-draining hill at the 2 km mark. Here's the thing about hills: if you convince yourself that the other runners are suffering more than you, you don't feel so bad. You feel bad, sure, but it gives you a needed boost of confidence to blast by someone while going uphill. After passing several people on the hill, nobody passed me and I passed nobody over the remaining 3 km. The time: 18:57.

During this time, from mid-October to 21 November, I upped my GMAT practice time to 16 hours per week. The GMAT questions are easy, but the trick is to get the timing and syntax right -- mindless questions, over and over and over again. It's less about developing smarts and more about developing confidence and routine. It paid off. The second exam was a keeper.

These achievements are not remarkable. Clearly I'm not going to qualify for the Olympics and I'm not going to be on the short list for any prizes for intellectual achievement. In an absolute sense, these accomplishments are nothing. I know that. I wanted to know if I was still elastic -- physically and mentally. Since I had exiled myself from the Space Cadet Cult, I had lost direction. My ambition had atrophied and I wanted it back. I wanted to see if I could pick a spot on the horizon and not stop moving until I got there. I got what I wanted. Now the trick is to take this confidence and impress the admissions committees at Michigan and MIT. I had to convince myself before I could convince anyone else.

Paranthetical: sometimes you have to know when to stop.

The plan was to cut back from training after the final race. The day after the race, a co-worker suggested that I run the Gobble Gobble Gobble 4 Miler with him and his friends in Somerville on Thanksgiving. I figured that I was probably never going to be in such great shape again and that I should take advantage of it one last time. And since that hill in Lexington was such a killer, I was going to go gonzo on the hills in Lowell to train for the Somerville race.

For two weeks I went up and down Christian Hill, Fort Hill, and Belvidere Hill. I wasn't going to be beaten by a hill. Of course, I was beaten by the hills anyway -- the aggregate of all of those extra ups and downs aggravated my right hip. (The orthopedist called it a stress reaction, which sounds better, I suppose, than the stress fracture I was dreading.) I wanted to break 24:00 for the four mile race, but settled for 26:07. At least they served free beer after the race.