BEing a Good Speaker


I don’t know how I had gotten through 3 semesters at MIT without ever having to give a presentation, but somehow that happened. I was honestly quite happy about that because I really hate public speaking, so naturally I was not looking forward to the journal club presentation. The good news is, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. However, there were a lot of difficulties along the way L

It was really hard to read my article. In fact, it took me 3 DAYS to read it and then reread it because I kept on having to look things up or read the references to actually know what was happening. I had to break the results section down sentence by sentence to make sure I understood everything.

Me trying to read the paper:

However, when I finished reading the paper for about the 5th time, I had a really good understanding of what was happening, and I really started to appreciate for what it was.

How I felt after reading the paper:


The hardest part of this assignment was definitely the speaking part. When I was practicing for my presentation, I’m pretty sure I forgot how to speak English. My brain would stop working every time I tried to say the words “brain metastatic breast cancer” (@Izumi) and I couldn’t make a full sentence without pausing to think about what to say. I knew so much about my paper but talking about it was so difficult. After a lot of practice and almost losing my voice, however, I was finally able to make a coherent 10 minute talk about my article (Shoutout to Kristen for listening to my talk at its absolute worst @Izumi).

The day of my presentation, I was so nervous. I felt like this mouse trying to get cheese from a mouse trap:

I was REALLY nervous, however, once I started talking I felt the fear sort of drift away. Although my voice was still shaking, I was pretty excited to give the presentation. I thought the research in my article was really cool and I really wanted to share it.

All in all, I’m very happy I didn’t pass out during the journal club presentation. I’m glad that my first presentation like this at MIT got to be in front of people I knew. I really enjoyed this assignment. I was happy that I was able to answer the questions my peers had. I now know like I have a full understanding of a particular scientific topic.

Although I still wouldn’t say that I enjoy public speaking. I know I’ll still be nervous next time I have to give a presentation, but at least I know that I can actually do it.

You know what they say:

Even though this assignment was, in my opinion, very difficult, it reinforced my decision to be a course 20. I really enjoyed what I was doing! I am looking forward to the rest of what 20.109 and course 20 has to offer! J

Now onto the MOD 2 paper….

~Andrea

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