Academic expertise
Not so long ago, I was asked at very short notice - less than 36 hours - to give a lecture to some of our postgrad students, the person slated to give it having had to go into hospital to have her appendix out.

So, the day before the lecture, I sat down to prepare. Like many academics, I work on the Micawberish principle that, as long as you finish the lecture at least one sentence better-informed than your students, you're fine. I didn't have to be an expert on the subject; I just had to know enough to talk convincingly for a couple of hours.

Talk convincingly? Waffle, I mean.

I thought I'd get away with it, too... until I arrived at the room where I would be teaching, and fired up the projector to show the PowerPoint slides to accompany my spiel. Something had gone terribly wrong.

All those lovingly-prepared bullet points - the which would both convey the important aspects of the arguments to the students, and provide me with prompts so that I knew what to say - were displayed not in nice big Arial, but as a series of abstract symbols and pictograms.

It was obvious to everyone that I was Wingdings it.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 29 Mar 2013, 16:03, 3 replies)

You utter prick.

(dozers, do fuck off ur a nob m8, Fri 29 Mar 2013, 16:30, closed)

Well played.

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 29 Mar 2013, 17:40, closed)

Boredom is a terrible thing.
My options were to write a terrible pun or actually write a lecture.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 29 Mar 2013, 17:45, closed)