How iironiic...

[iironiic]

As you all know... I was invited to give a mathematical talk about my recently co-authored paper. I was so nerve-struck thinking about presenting my results to a crowd of mathematical buffs and I honestly did not prepare as much as I hoped since I am also working on an REU project, which invested most of my summer time.

The day of my talk, I met up with my professor before my scheduled time to rehearse the talk, and man... I swear I was stuttering and saying "Um" countless of times during my one run. He gave me a few suggestions to improve my talk (mainly focusing on my choices of words), but not enough to comfort me entirely. I spent the remaining three to five hours practicing to myself. It's funny how I can speak mathematics to myself fluently but not so fluently to others.

Before my talk, I decided to attend a few other talks to observe how they are presenting their subject matter. The main theme of the session that I attended is number theory (the field of math that I plan on pursuing after my undergraduate years), so the content itself is engaging. Then I unfortunately had to leave early to go to my room, and mentally prepare myself seconds before I began.

Then, I gave my talk. And surprisingly I said "Um" only once! Other than that, I was confident overall and content with my overall performance.

Today I was at the awards ceremony for Mathfest, thinking to myself... "lmfaooo not going to win cash prize lololololol." I sat with a group of friends that I made here in Mathfest conversing with them as we eat our fine meal (I feel so classy overall hahaha). Moments later, the award ceremony began and they gave each presenter a certificate for presenting something in Mathfest. Then the cash prizes were rewarded and surprisingly enough, I was one of the award recipients! I was stunned, walked up to the front of the room, shook hands with the President of the Pi Mu Epsilon Honor Society and received my $150 cash prize and a number theory book.

I am still stunned as I'm writing this. What a pleasant surprise.

On a side note, I also toured around UWisconsin at Madison with my advising professor (the other co-author of the recently published paper) who received his Ph.D there. He bought me a strawberry smoothie so that's very nice of him. I also attended Melanie Wood's number theory lecture after the award ceremony and enjoyed that as well! I plan on emailing her to discuss about what she presented later today. I also received my reimbursements that they promised immediately after the talk, so the entire trip was funded by them!

Lastly, I met HammyMcSquirrel here at Madison! We got delicious Thai food and I had my first Dairy Queen ice cream! I will be hanging out with him for the majority of the day tomorrow! (: Yay for meeting my second FFRiend ever!! Hopefully I'll meet some of you one day!

Overall, I had a great experience here at Madison! I should probably work on my REU project at some point tomorrow but for now, I'm going to relax for the rest of the night! Pictures of my stay here at Madison will be uploaded once PME uploads them on their Facebook page haha.

On the road to success! I can't wait to see what lies beyond my mathematical career ((:

[m0de]

congrats! i myself get extremely nervous when speaking in front of an audience. there is no way i could have sat there and explained something to a large group of people without nerves getting the best of me. im glad you pulled through, and even received the cash for your talk! good luck in the future with your career choice wilson!

[infinity.]

congrats man! that's absolutely awesome!

is there a chance that some interested ffrians could read your paper? i'm a math major if it means anything

[igotrhythm]

DUDE! You got to visit Badger Country? Freakin' sweet!

Get some Sprecher root beer if at all humanly possible. Brown pint bottle, got a crow on the label. Totally fukken worth it. I miss that stuff the most out of all the things I left behind when I moved to Michigan.

(RT worthy, tho)

[Cardman.]

That is awesome man. Public speaking or doing any kind of performance really requires a mindset that is easy to use but hard to acquire at first. Once you have it, you usually don't have many problems. You just have to remember why you are there and why it is important to you.

[Frank Munoz]

Proud of you mang~
Also, holy crap hammy?!

I also agree with Infinity. I used to be a math addict and attempt to conjure up new algorithms, and on several occasion attempt to link infinity with imaginary numbers. But I gave that up and went to music~

I'm sure we would all love read your paper.

[iironiic]

Thanks guys! I will definitely link you guys to the paper when the publication is written! It basically deals with finding a uniform bound for the area of a region formed by intersecting two ellipses. It's really interesting (:

And sorry igot, I know it's RT worthy but I'm too ecstatic about this considering it is one of the bigger math conferences nationwide. Also, I don't feel like putting a huge block of text on my profile because that'll ruin the symmetry of my profile xD

[DossarLX ODI]

Congratulations on your prize and being able to present yourself in a confident manner! Speaking to an audience is an essential skill and it's great you were able to pull it off especially in a time like this.

[Reincarnate]

Awesome -- congrats, dude