The iWork Suite Saved My Life

The following post is an account of how the Apple iWork Suite saved my life during the preparation and presenting of the presentation I mentioned in my previous post.

The reason I was up until 5:30am preparing this presentation is because I had to create a sport clinic, and present an outline, a budget, a brochure, and prepare a "Powerpoint" or "Keynote" with iWork. So what did I do? I went to the trust iWork suite. I used "Pages" for my outline and brochure. I used "Numbers" for my budget spreadsheet. And I used "Keynote" for my powerpoint presentation.

Let me just say that everything that I created was amazingly easy to do, and looked awesome. The reason it took me so long was because I had to come up with all the content for everything, but when it came to creating everything, it was so simple. So I was glad that I stayed up so late working on this because it was well worth it.

Here's the kicker though. When I handed out my brochures to the class, and then when I started to present my keynote I could audibly hear the "ooo's" and "awe's" from my classmates. Especially in the final slide when I created a pie chart for the budget of the clinic, and the way that I had the chart enter, and then the look of the chart was just awesome, and again I think my classmates were impressed.

So the moral of the story is, if you don't have a Mac, get one. If you have a Mac but don't own the latest iWork 09 suite and you are going to be giving some type presentation anytime soon then you should definitely invest in the iWork 09 suite. Even having "Pages" just writing papers is worth it. I use Pages as my exclusive word processor now, and I have left Microsoft Word in the dust.

Anybody else use Apple iWork? What is your opinion on it? Was your experience as positive as mine?

My Real-Life Twitter Story

This is my real-life twitter story for the week.

So me being the procrastinator that I am, put off this big final presentation until the night before it was due. I started working on this presentation at about 9pm that night. I was working on it on-and-off while being distracted every couple minutes. Then I took a 2 hour break to have a massive dance party (that is another story for later). I came back to my presentation at about 1:15am. I did not complete it until 5:30am.

At this time I proceeded to update my twitter saying, "I'm finally going to bed. Hopefully I can get 2 hours of sleep." (I actually ended up oversleeping and getting about 4, but I cut it real close to presentation time)

So I go to class and my professor asks me if I got much sleep, and he said that he saw my twitter at 5:30am that morning. I completely forgot that he was following me on twitter. I told him that I actually got about 4 hours because I overslept. This actually resulted in him having sympathy for me.

I just thought it was funny that the very professor I was presenting to that morning was the one who was following me on twitter and saw that I was up all night doing the presentation for his class. I don't know my grade yet, but hopefully I did well.

Do you have any real-life twitter stories? I wanna know about them.

class?

Today was one of the most chill days ever, and the above picture represents how chill it was. And yet it seemed like a very stressed day. The following is literally what I did for the entirety of the day:

- slept in till 10:00am
- went to senior aerobics class (yes you read that right, senior aerobics class, ridiculous)
- lunch
- sat in my room for a couple hours catching up on blogs and such
- soccer
- dinner
- amazing shower
- then just hung out in the room with my roommate Nate
- now I'm sitting in the library with no access to the internet cause Moody's wifi is retarded

I don't know why it has seemed like a stressful day. Probably because I still have to teach an hour long session on Thursday, as well as take an exam by Thursday morning. So I still have lots to do, and the anticipation of that is just killing me.

So anyways, today was also one of those days where I felt like I could literally learn more by sitting in my room rather than going to class.

1. Because it was senior aerobics class
2. One of the bloggers I subscribe to was doing a live interview about his redesign of his blog, and some basic blogging strategies that I found really interesting, but I was only able to watch like 10 minutes of it because I had to go to class. I was really considering skipping, but I decided against it.

I find myself feeling like this many times, and for some of the same reasons. Because I know I'm not gonna get much out of the class, and because I know I could learn something by watching or listening to whatever it is. I can usually find some very useful or informational content somewhere somehow online.

So once again I am frustrated because I feel like I can learn more by not going to class than by going to class. Most of the time I don't think this is true, but every once and a while, I know for a fact that it is true.

O well, I guess this isn't helping my motivation to finish school, lol. So I'm gonna end it here.

dozing and nodding

Today was the most I've struggled to stay awake in any of my classes so far this semester. This morning in Romans at 8am was the worst. I was nodding, and dozing the whole time.

But there is something that I realized this morning. Its crazy how much of a difference it makes if the professor has a monotone voice or an interesting voice. In my 8am my professor has a really monotone voice and doesn't really make the class that interesting, and I could barely stay awake. Then I was really worried about my next class which was Acts at 9am. But interestingly enough it was with a professor who does make the class interesting and has jokes and doesn't use a monotone voice the whole time, and I was awake as ever.

I think it also helped that we were talking about an interesting topic, the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues. So I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to stay awake and actually pay attention during that class. But now I am done with classes for the day and my next event is lunch at 11:40, so I'm definitely going to take a nap (one of my favorite past times for those who didn't know).

So good day so far.

You all have trouble staying awake in class? Or if not class then at your job?