Analysis of the Karen Owen Presentation

Duke student Karen F Owen has been the center of some recent blogosphere buzz. (Note to self: ram my face into the side of a fire hydrant for using the term “blogosphere”.) The Duke graduate created a PowerPoint presentation detailing her sexual encounters with thirteen students during her college career. She included their names, photos lifted from Facebook, her relationship history with the subjects, details of their performances in bed, and overall ratings for each male. She sent the slides to three of her friends who in turn spread the file to most of their friends. Now everyone has a copy and the subjects involved and university officials are enraged. Karen defends herself by saying fraternities make similar lists. If you are interested in viewing the PowerPoint presentation, click the link below.

Jezebel: College Girl’s PowerPoint “Fuck List” Goes Viral

I can understand her demonstration in justice. Chauvinistic frat boys are always bragging to their friends about sleeping around, they drop names, and they give detailed descriptions of their encounters. I am sure the douchebags in her presentation were no exception. Many in our culture view women as nothing more than sexual objects. When a guy has sex with a bunch of girls, he is a “player”. When a girl has sex with a bunch of guys, she is a “whore”. It is a double standard that needs to be abolished. Her retaliation is understandable and completely justified.

Nah, I’m just kidding. She’s a total slut.

To make matters worse is her 41 slides of rotting garbage. Just look at this slide from her presentation.



Back when I was a teaching assistant for a senior level engineering lab, I had to grade PowerPoint presentations from groups of students. I have seen some good presentations and I have seen some abysmal pieces of cow feces cascading from a projector and onto a screen which does not deserve the shame displayed on it. This might be the single worst set of slides my poor eyes have ever had the misfortune of seeing. It is lucky for Karen she did not present these slides in my class (of course assuming the labs were about blowjobs and not acoustic emission sensors and inlet guide vanes). I would have failed this girl so hard puppies would screech in her presence and upon death she would be reborn as a hideous undead creature cursed to roam the lands doing the bidding of the devil, collecting the souls of the damned, and viewing shitty PowerPoint presentations like her own until the End of Days.

Karen, let’s list out some things you got wrong.

• You literally wrote out EVERY SINGLE FUCKING WORD of your presentation. This is the kind of thing a fifth grader does when first using PowerPoint.
  
  
• The font size is terrible for presentations. I do not bring binoculars to board meetings, so cut this shit out.
  
  
• You have way too many words on your slides. The sample slide above has 31 lines. It is obvious you like to jabber for hours on end, but 31 lines on one goddamn slide? Christ. It is called “being concise”. It is critical in presentations as the audience does not want to spend three hours listening to you talk about giving head. Actually, I take that back.
  
  
• The introduction is missing a sense of “mapping”, i.e. where this presentation is going. A good mapping slide gives the audience information about the structure of the presentation. Structure is your friend. It is much better than staying up until 5 AM throwing a bunch of horse shit onto PowerPoint slides.
  
  
• There is no conclusion slide. What am I supposed to take away from this presentation?
  
  
• There is no title on most of your slides. Each slide should have its own title. Slide titles are important so the audience has some fucking idea what you are discussing on th slide. This also helps in keeping up with your presentation as nearly every slide looks like either a collage of photos of douchebags or an excerpt from your diary.
  
  
• Black text on a white background? Was it that hard to spend the five seconds necessary to right-click and change the background color of the slides? Go with blue. Bitches love blue backgrounds. Karen, at least make it look like you were giving a damn.
  
  
• Your bar graph looks like diarrhea. I appreciate the properly labeled axes and a chart title, but the grey background is hideous.
  
  
• There are no slide numbers. This is a big pet peeve of mine. How can an audience member keep up with your presentation? How would he or she know if the slide handouts are in order?
  
  
• The bullet points in most of your slides serve no function. I am using a bulleted list right now to … I don’t know … fucking list some shit. You just used them to start new paragraphs.
  

At some point while looking over this clutter, my OCD kicked in. I started to print some handouts and red pen the hell out of this presentation, but then I realized there was no salvation here. There was only throwing out this mess and starting anew. Therefore I have taken the time out of my day to create a new presentation. Karen, you can thank me by closing your legs and bringing me a Reuben.

Owen Presentation Corrected

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