Auch wenn ich wandere im Tal des Todesschattens...

I thought for a while about what I should title this post. At first I considered a more concrete and descriptive title, but then I checked my stats and noticed a trend. Most posts that have longer titles like jokes, quotes, or phrases tend to get more hits. So I went for something a little longer as a test case. And since my hit count is tabulated right when you load the page, I can give away my secret and you can't do anything about it.

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

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.