The Apples in My Orchard

It’s no secret that I have been stressed lately. Hopefully, after this weekend some of the stress will be alleviated. On Saturday I am a featured speaker at our local Spring into Gardening Conference, hosted by our Master Gardener Volunteer Association. It is an annual conference our group hosts, bringing in at least one well-known speaker. This year it is Melinda Myers. She is well-known here in the mid-west for her gardening expertise and ability to inspire. She’s written numerous books, hosted radio shows with plant advice specific to our region, and also is known as the Great Lakes Gardener – a public television show that features gardening in this area of the country. I am looking forward to hearing her speak.

But, between my five credits of graduate course work, being in an art show with my handcrafted jewelry, working on a research project, daily blog writing, and running my garden club for students, I am swamped. Somewhere in there I squeezed time into preparing my Powerpoints for this weekend’s presentations. I am presenting two topics: Gardening with Children: Using Awe as a Tool to Engage our Youth and Monarchs, Milkweed, and The Monarch Highway.  Both are topics on which I have presented before at conferences. But, I wanted to revise my notes and power point for the Gardening with Children presentation and I needed a new power point for the Monarch presentation. Last Sunday, I sat down and created the Powerpoint for that. I was pleased and it was finished. During the week, I attended to my course work and conducted an unusual garden club lesson during which I had to be taped.  Yesterday, I made time to put the finishing touches on my handouts and review my powerpoints.

The Gardening with Children Powerpoint was done.  CHECK

I could pull it up on a jumpdrive that I would take to the conference site with me. CHECK

I got copies of a handout for my Monarch presentation. CHECK

The Monarch Presentation needed a few statistics entered on several slides. So, I went to pull it up. Where was it? I had saved it to my jump drive, hadn’t I? Yes, I was sure I did! I spent two hours at dinner time last night hunting for this finished project, only to not be able to find it. UGH! I resigned myself to the realization that I must have thought I saved it to a jump drive but didn’t. So, last night, when I thought I could return to my school work at a more leisurely pace, I was busy typing up my notes for the Monarch presentation. At least I had those. And, I had indicated at which point I had put my slides next to the text. But, still no Powerpoint. Today, I will have to remake my powerpoint presentation on Monarchs. Luckily, I have thousands of photographs and  it should be relatively easy. It really only took me a couple of hours last Sunday morning to make the first version.

But, this was a major oops! What did I learn? Primarily, I learned to agree to only one presentation, not two. AND, I learned that after I think I saved a presentation, paper, or ANY work I completed to a jumpdrive, I should pull it back up and check that it is there.

I am thankful I looked at this last night. After all, the presentation is not until tomorrow. I best get working on it!