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If I can just make myself speak slower somehow, I should be fine. I have a lot of material, and I expect to have to answer questions throughout. I'm just woefully behind on preparation; I was supposed to have started practicing my talk a couple weeks ago.

Practice taking a breath at the end of each sentence.

You can also - and this sounds silly - practice by listening to yourself say each sentence, as opposed to casting your mind ahead to the next sentence while you're talking.

Get a Post-It note and write "Slow down!" on it. Then before your talk, attach the Post-It to the forehead of someone sitting in the front row.

OK, maybe not. Do you know anyone who will be in the audience? You could have them give you a sign to slow down if you're going too fast. At least that's what we did in high school....

There are few things that generate as much heat as a 5 year old with a 103 degree fever at 3am crawling into your bed. Poor noodle. It's back down to 99, though.

I have over 200 slides

I suspect that you actually have the right amount of material for 2-3 hours. The rule of thumb for scientific presentations is one slide per minute. There will be questions, and of course you will have to wait for them to finish laughing at all of your jokes. I think that you are going to have to hurry through the last few slides.

Do you think I should move it?

It doesn't really matter. That was just for future reference.

Three hours is a really long talk. An hour of material should easily be three hours of presentation, counting questions and breaks. Can you build in some discussion topics? It helps me to think of it as a conversation with 30 people, rather than something I'm presenting for hours. In a conversation, you watch to see if people are following what you're saying and slow down or repeat if they don't seem to be with you.

Feel better soon, Em!

You can also - and this sounds silly - practice by listening to yourself say each sentence, as opposed to casting your mind ahead to the next sentence while you're talking.

Ah, yeah. I just need to get more familiar and confident with my slides and what I'm actually saying. I mean, I know my slides really well, but I haven't memorized all the things I want to say, especially if they're not on the slide already.

You could have them give you a sign to slow down if you're going too fast. At least that's what we did in high school....

I don't know who will be there, but I do intend to tell them that, uh, I tend to talk fast, so please don't hesitate to tell me to slow the fuck down.

I suspect that you actually have the right amount of material for 2-3 hours. The rule of thumb for scientific presentations is one slide per minute. There will be questions, and of course you will have to wait for them to finish laughing at all of your jokes. I think that you are going to have to hurry through the last few slides.

Right! That's what I think as well, which is why I was freaking out that I was talking through them so fast.

Can you build in some discussion topics? It helps me to think of it as a conversation with 30 people, rather than something I'm presenting for hours. In a conversation, you watch to see if people are following what you're saying and slow down or repeat if they don't seem to be with you.

Thanks, Ginger. I do want to try to keep it interactive. I have several points where I ask if anyone remembers something from before or can take a guess about a particular mechanism, and so on.

It'll help PC if you have a rough timeline to keep you in check. So know that x amount of slides will cover fifteen minutes, and you can digress or take some questions as you get to the end of each fifteen minute (or 30, or however you slice it) block so that you don't get too ahead of yourself.

That way you can build some brakes into your talk. And you're dealing with discrete chunks that are easier to manage.

discrete chunks

God, I love it when people use this word correctly. Yum.