I can hear your snort of disbelief from wherever the heck I am at this moment. But no, I kid you not: there really, truly is a week designated exclusively for hating PowerPoint. Google it: I dare you.
And why not celebrate? The incomparable level of boredom Powerpoint inspires has done what thousands of psychologists across the world have failed to do: unite a generation of young students trapped in lecture and a generation of gray-haired office workers stuck in meetings in a common cause that does not involve the words “hope” or “change.”
Of course, as much as I enjoy having a scapegoat for life manufactured by none other than a Harvard dropout, I’ll be the first to admit that PowerPoint takes a lion’s share of the blame for its somewhat less than appealing nature. Good speakers oftentimes tend to not even need it, whereas bad speakers prefer to copy and paste the thesaurus while praying for a miracle to fix the sentences that wander more than the tortured minds of their audiences.
It’s like the stitch in your side you get after sprinting up to Corwin Hall at 4:27 p.m. to turn in your junior paper at 4:30 p.m.: It’s a mere symptom of the larger problem. Though in my case, I’m still trying to sort out whether that problem was poor time management skills (sorry, professors) or my incredible out-of-shape-ness (sorry, track coaches).
But the point is that PowerPoint itself is not entirely at fault. The existence of a PowerPoint-hating week almost — and I cringe as I say this — almost makes me feel sorry for it.
Now, my fellow Princetonians, I know that few of us can actually relate to having an entire week sealed off every year for others to seethe in their fiery hatred of us. Therefore, we need to put this in terms that we can comprehend. Let’s pretend that PowerPoint is, oh, I don’t know, bickering an eating club. We’ll call it Eating Club X. The moment its name comes up for discussion, the president of Eating Club X, so shocked that someone could have a stupid name like PowerPoint, spills coffee all over himself. He is so enraged at the stains on his nice new popped-collar polo that he hoses PowerPoint, even though PowerPoint’s daddy is Bill Gates – yes, it turns out that even bickerees need more than just good connections. It’s not technically PowerPoint’s fault it was hosed; it just happens to have traits that would incline it to be in circumstances that would lead it to getting hosed. Similarly, it just happens to be a good thing for bad speakers to stare at as they fill the room with their sleep-inducing monotone.
What can be done, then, to save PowerPoint from dissolving in a torrent of angry cubicle-dwellers suffering from nervous breakdowns and looking for a target? Let’s fix this with a hypothetical. Close your eyes and imagine that I have just graduated from Princeton. My celebrations are marred by my firm belief that I am doomed to a life of unemployment. Suddenly, President Obama walks up to me and offers me the position of Holiday Czar, a job newly created just for me. Overjoyed, I announce my first decree: changing “Just Say No to PowerPoint Week” to “Gosh, I Really Like Dynamic Lecturers Who Rely on Their Own Speaking Talent to Create a Fun-Filled Classroom Experience Without the Aid of a Verbal Crutch Week,” commonly abbreviated as G.I.R.L.D.L.W.R.O.T.O.S.T.T.C.A.F.F.C.E.W.T.A.O.A.V.C. Week. Suddenly the symptom-haters are simultaneously presented with both the real problem and how to fix it; and no, the answer isn’t adding sound effects as you move to the next slide.
Don’t think you’re immune either, Princeton. I’ve seen professor reviews on Blackboard that contain nothing more than the fact that the professor uses PowerPoint, and yes, that induces the same gag reflex in me that it probably does in you. But it shouldn’t have to do that. I’ve had some excellent professors that use PowerPoint as well as some not-so-great ones. And despite my strange tendency to gravitate toward and subsequently celebrate offbeat holidays, I might just have to pass on this one.
Though I’m tempted to celebrate a new one in its place: “Just Say No to People Who Don’t Say No to Just Say No to PowerPoint Week Week.” Who’s with me?
Christine Brozynski is a politics major from Mendham, N.J. She can be reached at cbrozyns@princeton.edu.
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