The rest of the story...

The day of the Big Dry Run arrived last Friday (1 Feb). I'd made several requests on what level of detail I should go into on the hazard report. "Keep it high level." That's what the mantra was, but I didn't understand exactly what that meant. So we were supposed to walk through this on Friday and I asked yet again. "I'll go get Chad." Later "Chad's not happy. He asked me if you had a plan and I told him no." I had an outline of a plan. I just had not filled in the details because I couldn't get answers to my questions. "We'll talk about it." But we never did. The result was that Chad came in and gave us an hour long lesson on How to do a Presentation. From very basics. He lectured as if he were lecturing two children. This is not what I needed or wanted. It was not helpful. I have given presentations before! Believe it or not. In 26 years at NASA, I've given many. Even though I'm not a good presenter, I do know how to and I have lived through them all. To say I wasn't happy understates the situation greatly. Not only because of the patronizing attitude; there was the misrepresentation that I was not prepared at all, and the fact that my time was being wasted when I could be doing Quite Useful Things.

I lived through that though, steamed as I was. I sat at my desk and made my couple of charts. And by the way, I didn't know I was going to have to walk through part of my fault tree...because no one mentioned that when I asked what level of detail I was supposed to go into. So I had to pull that out and make charts and in my spare time figure out how I was going to fit that into my presentation, where it would fit and make sense and how I was going to talk it.

I did finish everything and even had time for lunch before the dry run started. I will take blame for what I am responsible for. I refuse to be thought unprepared for what was not brought to my attention and there was more than one thing that I got pinged on in the dry run for. The worst of it was the opening charts, prepared in an hour that morning with not enough information. I couldn't answer questions on which configuraiton this was on. Not every element used the same config, and I had to slide by the best I could on that. And Jon gave me a nice drawing of the launch vehicle, but it was the wrong config, which Brian (who knows all and sees all) was kind enough to point out to me during the dry run. The typoes and badly worded sentences I take full blame for. The fact that I can't read from a chart because my mouth is dry as cotton I will take blame for...using wrong words or tripping over them.

But I did get the chance to show I was not a total moron. When I was asked questions that I could answer from my own store of knowledge and didn't have to read off a chart, then I was on good ground and I answered them all well, I think. I only had to defer two but they really were outside the purview of what I was presenting so passing them on to others to answer was no discomfort for me. That was my time to shine and I did well on that. So I think that allowed the chance for me to show I did understand the report and could explain it. I wasn't a total idiot. I would say it was more good than bad and I know I amplify the bad. And I had all weekend to think about the bad as well. Something I finally got over some time late Saturday afternoon.

Van told me in sincerity that I did a good job. Chad popped off a perfunctory "good job". But that's over. I get a couple week break before the Big Presentation. I understand where I need polishing and I feel better facing them than a primed hostile audience in the dry run...Chad.