But
I digress, today's title is from the bible! I don't read the bible,
I'm pretty sure that if I owned a copy it would burn my hands if
tried to read it. Or I'd touch it and it would act like a book from
Harry Potter
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| Is this sacrilegious? |
The
quote is “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death...” And let me tell you I was pretty nervous last week. Not
shadow-of-death nervous, but close. In German universities there are
two kinds of classes, because heaven forbid a lecture class allow
students to give presentations as well, that would be chaos. So, I
have two of these presentation-only seminars where two students each
give a presentation every week. In these seminars the teachers are of
course present to give scathingly blunt German criticism. “That
presentation was absolutely awful,” or “Well I think almost
everyone is asleep now, you can sit down.” After sitting in these
classes for about 2 months, I was understandably nervous to have my
turn under the gun.
Last
week in my only master's class, special genetic technology, I had to
give my presentation. Like a moron, I did what I would do in the
States for a presentation. Pick the topic I knew the least about, I'm
gonna say that I temporarily blacked out and made this stupid
decision. Yeah, that's a good excuse. My topic was “Biotech Patents
and their effect on Agriculture in Developed Nations.” This was a
stupid decision because I never studied agriculture, I never studied
patent law, and I only minored in politics. This means that I spent
the past two weeks learning as much as I could about these subjects.
Final result: were I a lawyer, I would probably drown myself. Patent
law is god awful.
Incidentally,
patent law has almost no effect on European agriculture. Most
countries have forbidden growing genetically modified foods, Germany
included. In the US however, all of our main food crops are
genetically modified, well except sugar beets.
 |
| German sugar beets, about 6 feet high |
I
learned that Monsanto is ruthlessly efficient, but well within their
rights in everything I studied. I also learned that US patent law is
significantly more liberal that European patent law.
Anyways,
I was freaking out about this presentation. Palm sweat, fast heart,
the whole nine yards. I stand up, give my presentation in the time
required, ask for questions, and prepare myself for the salvo. Little
did I know that one of my two patron saints had interceded for me.
See, the night before was a rocking party and all of the students
were hung over or tired or both. So none of them had been paying
enough attention to ask an intelligent question. I was asked to
re-explain a single graphic, and then I was asked to define 2 words
that were new.
I
took my seat. No scathing criticism, nothing. And then, I handed the
teacher my pages of source material. She looked puzzled for a second.
I clenched. She looked at me and said, “Ugh, finally a works cited
that I can actually use.
Thank you!”
I
then promptly went home, popped a few valium and zonked out. Well
earned rest.
