Take Your Own Pulse

It does not matter how lovely your Power Point presentation is, how well-written your morning report is, how intelligent your points are or how many references you pulled in...if you are chewing gum while delivering the talk. I do not remember what you presented the other day, or what fabulous teaching points you made, but I definitely remember you smacking your gum around. I kept wondering if you had braces, or a speech impediment, because I just thought there was no way a person who graduated from high school, college, and medical school and is currently a physician in training would be dumb enough to chew gum during a public presentation. I was obviously wrong.