Thanks Algae! And sorry for annoying everyone with my silly queries - I'm just so nervous

I plan to work til 12 or so then relax for an hour, bed and back up at 5 - seems like overkill but I have a tendency to forgot what I'm supposed to say when I'm nervous so I want to practice, practice, practice!! 1hr20 mins to go- much to do. Good luck everyone (up)

Thanks everybody for the advice. I have e-mailed to check but no reply as yet - and time is short! I'm practicing the presentation now both using my slides and with just my paper.

On a side note - how does everyone introduce themselves at the start of their talk. The chair introduces each speaker but do you then introduce yourself again? I'm thinking of something along the lines of "Good afternoon, my name is EV an I'm here today to talk to you about (insert title of paper)". Does that seem about right? I would never say "good afternoon" in any other context but hello doesn't sem formal enough :$

Hi All,
In looking at the guidelines for a conference I'm presenting at next week, there's no mention of powerpoint presentations at all. It just says that authors papers will be uploaded to laptops at the start of the session from a USB key. Nb it says papers not slides/presentations. I've been preparing ppt slides for the past few days and I'm wondering now if I'll get to use them. Has anyone been to a conference where you don't present from slides? I've never been to a conference before, let alone presented at one.
I could e-mail the chair but I don't want to seem silly if the answer's really obvious. I'll ask around the office tomorrow anyway.

made it into the office -eerily quiet - I think there's only one other person in the building!
Goal 1: finish sorting out slides
Goal 2: practise what I'll say in my head til it's pretty much memorised

Thanks Jesponclough! I really just needed someone to say it was doable in the time left. I guess I'm a bit of a perfectionist and want to be as prepared as I can - especially since I fully expect to be a bag of nerves on the day!

As for the conference, mine is in Ireland so not the same one as you are attending. I hope you enjoy it :-)

Not a good day - I was too anxious to get my slides done- they are half done from the last time I looked at them. I feel like I should be much better prepared by now. Is 3 days enough time to prepare slides, get to know the paper really well and practice the presentation? My stomach has butterflies and I can't concentrate so I am thinking of not even trying to work tonight and instead relaxing the my OH. That makes me feel like I'm being really lazy though. Oh and I am shopping with my mother in the morning to try find something to wear to the conference and the dinner so I probably won't be able to start working tomorrow until after lunch

This is pretty much what I wrote in the one goal thread but I don't want to hijack the thread so I thought I'd start my own. I would really appreciate any feedback - as is evident, I am prone to panicking about these things.

Eep I have my first conference presentation next week and I need to do the slides today. The paper was written and submitted about a month ago so I am hoping that it shouldn't be too much trouble to make the slides. There is an issue however (I 'm not sure how big of an issue it is?) in that the paper I submitted outlines what we plan to do during the course of my PhD and the associated project but since the paper was submitted some of the things we were going to do we may not be doing anymore. The thing that we most likely won't be doing was the main focus of the paper and is in the title. So I have a bit of a dilemma - do I just present the paper as written or do I admit that there is some doubt over what we will do? The problem is that I don't know for definite if we are/ are not going to do it yet. I did stress in the paper that a project was a work-in-progress.

Sorry for hijacking the thread - back to it.
Goal 1 - re-read paper

Not a good day - I was too anxious to get my slides done- they are half done from the last time I looked at them. I feel like I should be much better prepared by now. Is 3 days enough time to prepare slides, get to know the paper really well and practice the presentation? My stomach has butterflies and I can't concentrate so I am thinking of not even trying to work tonight and instead relaxing the my OH. That makes me feel like I'm being really lazy though. Oh and I am shopping with my mother in the morning to try find something to wear to the conference and the dinner so I probably won't be able to start working tomorrow until after lunch

Goal 1 -still not done:-(

Eep I have my first conference presentation next week and I need to do the slides today. The paper was written and submitted about a month ago so I am hoping that it shouldn't be too much trouble to make the slides. There is an issue however (I 'm not sure how big of an issue it is?) in that the paper I submitted outlines what we plan to do during the course of my PhD and the associated project but since the paper was submitted some of the things we were going to do we may not be doing anymore. The thing that we most likely won't be doing was the main focus of the paper and is in the title. So I have a bit of a dilemma - do I just present the paper as written or do I admit that there is some doubt over what we will do? The problem is that I don't know for definite if we are/ are not going to do it yet. I did stress in the paper that a project was a work-in-progress.

Sorry for hijacking the thread - back to it.
Goal 1 - re-read paper

Goal 2 is more or less done- there is some sort of structure to the thing now.
So goal 3: find lots of literature to support what I am saying

So far so ok - 330 words written in 50 minutes - obviously much revision is needed but I just want to get it down in some sort of logical order so that I can see if my decision makes sense and then tomorrow I can go over it again - make it sound nice and add in lots of supporting evidence which hopefully I am going to find tonight!

I'm sure this has come up many times before but does anyone have an opinion on a guideline word count to aim for per hour/ tomato or whatever? I was aiming to do 400 in 50 minutes but ended up 70 words off. This is from memory/knowledge/ making it up writing by the way, I always come back and tidy it up and clear up references once I have a first draft.

Poor Sneaks :-( Here, have one of your five-a-day (sprout) ;-)

Today, I made it to the office and have already achieved one goal and 2 tomatoes (and lunch with a colleague :$) in the space of 2 hours!

So goal 2 - structure my review so that I can add in more data later when I find it - I've allowed myself 2 hours for this as it's currently just a mass of bullet points as I came across different papers

I was doing well but now my concentration is all gone - 5 tomatoes to show for my afternoon - hardly earth-shattering :-( On the bright side - it's the first time in weeks I've been able to do any work at all and I really did get more done than I thought I would so all-in-all I'm pretty happy.

Wow yes 15 tomatoes is impressive!! I think my all-time high was 12 :$ I'm going to use mytomatoes today actually. So goal1 DONE. Goal 2 lit search for one section of big review (I'm starting off gently!)