Intern Final Moments, Part 2: Season Finale Cliffhanger

And now for some recap of the Interns' final day: PRESENTATION DAY. Well, it all comes down to this, folks. The chance to really show what you've accomplished all summer. Needless to say, there were interns that blew us away, and there were interns that... well....

I got in early to make sure everything was set up and ready to go. Of course I was receiving finalized presentations at the very last minute, so it's a good thing I was expecting that and was available before the presentations were slated to begin. We had refreshments (coffee, tea, bagels) in the Fishbowl for any break times in the schedule. In the past, we intermixed interns from all the groups in an attempt to get everyone to stick around all day, but in retrospect that didn't really seem to work and just seemed to irritate people. So this year, we grouped the interns by research lab and didn't schedule any breaks, knowing that not all of the interns would use their full time slots and we would end up with spare time between groups (thus allowing for breaks). The only hard set times were the start times for each of the groups; that way we could avoid the "I showed up for my son/daughter/student/intern's presentation 10 minutes early only to find out it already happened!" frustrations that we have experienced in so many years past. While this all sounds great in theory, well, it didn't exactly work out as planned.

The day of presentations started at 9AM with some opening remarks from me. I've never really had to emcee such a "formal" event, so I was a little more nervous than usual, but it went alright. The MVRL group started us off and moved along at a nice pace. All 4 presentations went very well and received insightful questions from the audience. However, each intern was given 10 minutes to present and 5 minutes for questions, and by the time you get to the third and fourth presentations about visual perception the general questions start to run out. The group ended almost 15 minutes early, which allowed for a nice little break. 

I dismissed the audience and welcomed them to enjoy some refreshments in the Fishbowl, and the entire auditorium cleared out. But this first break pretty much signaled the start of the DRAMA. Our intern that I attempted to console out of a meltdown the day before had sports practice in the morning which included taking team pictures... I honestly wondered whether she was going to show up at all. As of break time, she was still MIA and no one had even heard from her - and her research group was up next. Considering the rigidity of the schedule, there wasn't a whole lot that we could do to cover, and we certainly could not rearrange which group presented next. What seemed the best idea was to rearrange the order of the presentations within the group, which would hopefully buy enough time until her arrival. So as the audience filed back in from their break, I had to explain away a slight change in the printed program, and keep moving forward.

Well, to make matters worse, the other two interns from this lab not only ran short on their presentations, but had very few questions asked of them... So they were done after about 20 minutes in to their cumulative allotted time of 45 minutes for the entire lab - and their compatriot was still AWOL. So I dismissed the audience once again, apologizing for the fact that it was time for yet another break, this time for possibly upwards of 25 minutes (!). The mass sense of irritation was impossible to ignore. Since I was a main organizer for the day, and emcee of the event, this was absolutely mortifying. Insult was added to injury when a couple voices from the crowd yelled, "Press on!!!" and I was forced to make excuses in front of the entire audience, making us look even more disorganized. What was most frustrating about this particular happening was that the voices both originated from people from within CIS - people who should have known why the schedule was set up the way that it was, and why we could not simply move up the other presentations for theirs or anyone else's convenience. Why would you throw one of your own co-workers under the bus like that? Not to mention it was rude to yell out in that manner. Obviously I'm being a little over-sensitive, but it really added more tension to the day which could have been easily avoided.

Who invited them?

Up next: Did our AWOL intern ever show up??! Was the next break really going to be a completely useless 25 minutes?! You'll have to stay tuned to find out.