I don’t generally watch the teen-coming-of-age drama shows, unless forced (as I was on vacation; the episode of Degrassi was a cheap ripoff of Pump Up the Volume without the benefit of a topless shot of Samantha Mathis), but I’m sure this plot has been covered somewhere: Awkward Teen asks the Beautiful Cheerleader to the prom; she has recently split with Handsome Quarterback, but doesn’t immediately say yes to AT, so he assumes she will say no and asks Safety Date, who is much more likely to want to go with him, and she says yes. Immediately thereafter, BC also says yes. Depending on the context, either tremendous angst or hilarity ensues. Possibly both, depending on the quality of the writing.

How does this apply to me? A while back I got an invitation from an old navy buddy to give the keynote talk at the Southern Atlantic Coast Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers Conference. Keynote speakers are typically either famous, to some degree, within either the physics or pop-physics communities, or are attempting to become so by promoting a book, so I am not the Beautiful Cheerleader in this scenario. I figured this was an act of desperation, but I agreed, thinking it would be fun. Lo and behold, it turns out that the other speaker can make it. (Cut to commercial)

All is not lost. I’m getting my own slot during the conference, though that will be a tad awkward — the after-dinner talk (and the public talk that some conferences have) has more leeway in not being directly related to the theme of the conference. I don’t have any particular insight into teaching to share; certainly not an hour’s worth. Same goes for a lot of themes that show up here — I don’t want to make the mistake of trying to turn a 5-minute skit into a feature movie, because it rarely works (are you listening, Saturday Night Live?) So I’ll go with my plan and talk about clocks and timekeeping, with a few cartoons thrown in, and leave the connection to teaching as an exercise for the interested viewer. I was going to do a bit about how I’m at least a little bit famous, and promote the blog, and I may leave that in.

I was also toying with the idea of going with a minimalist presentation, with very few slides in the first part of the talk. The show-and-tell part, though, really needs the “show” as much as the “tell.” Still working on that. I lose the comfort of the “1 – 1.5 minutes per slide” guideline, and since talks will follow mine, there’s pressure to finish on time.