Opportunities arise all the time as a Rice student, and for that, I am incredibly fortunate. Often times, these opportunities happen when I don’t feel ready for them, but I try to give them a go anyway. This happened last Thursday when Dr. Melendez came to our desks and asked Whitney and I to deliver a presentation. He wanted us to share some of Rice’s presentation pedagogy with the medical students the following Tuesday (today). We said we would see what we could do, and when he left, we exchanged an intimidated look. We had been in Barretos for less than a week, we had spoken with no medical students for more than a moment, and we had very little understanding of what the students had already been taught.

But being intimidated is no excuse, so this morning, we gave the presentation, and it went well. (see smiling faces)

Rice spends a lot of time teaching its students how to give presentations, but mostly in the engineering classes, so Whitney has more experience with the communications department than I do. For this reason, giving a presentation on presentations was a learning experience for me as much as it was for our audience members. This is just the first step in our collaboration with Dr. Melendez to improve formal communication at the hospital, and I have already learned a lot. I’ve learned from Dr. Melendez about the environments in which students usually present (often at a weekly journal club in English to practice the language.) I’ve learned a presentation tip from the question and answer section of our presentation this morning. But I was expecting to learn from the people here. More surprising were all of the things I learned from Whitney, who I could have easily spoken to at Rice without coming to Brazil.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have learned any of the things Whitney taught me in these last few days without coming to Barretos. Being in this far off place fosters learning that I could but wouldn’t find in Houston. Being pushed out of my element forces me to slow down, to look around, and learn what I may have in any other place taken for granted. So I will continue learning from the people I met, but I will also move forward aware that I may learn things I thought I already knew.