Time: A Frenemy in BE



Presenting research in front of an audience and a camera is scary. You don’t want to freeze, you want to be knowledgeable, you want to enunciate clearly, you want to explain competently, and you want to do all of that in under 10.5 minutes. Of course this is the case! It’s inherently hard to present research that probably took the authors of the paper months to collect and months to write about in the length of a YouTube video.
            As it turns out, I found time to be both a strong ally and a fierce enemy in conquering these challenges of the journal club presentations and here’s why:

-       An Ally in Preparation:
o   Even though it was spring break and I was in Cancún, I still printed out my research article in the hotel’s business center and took it with me to read by the pool. I even got scolded by one of the poolside waiters for doing “homework” on my vacation. However, I by no means regret having started reading my article early and doing so four times. I found that the digestibility of the paper increased with the number of times I read it and my understanding of it would constantly shift, sometimes even in the negative direction. The second time I read the abstract, after having read the paper once, I felt even more confused than I had the first time around. Iteration in general, though, helped me better grasp the information in the paper.
o   Another preparative step that proved really helpful and I wished I had practiced more were the transitions between slides. Those, if properly prepared, could really smoothen your presentation. Although I wrote out all my transitions in my slide notes, I definitely think using more time to rehearse and solidify those to muscle memory would economize time during the presentation.
-       An Enemy in Execution:
o   When you’re reading a prepared script and don’t have to make eye contact with an audience, it is significantly easier to meet the proper time limit of a presentation. However, when you can’t afford to read your notes or are too nervous to be checking for the time, the time limit becomes a problem. Other aspects of the presentation I found somewhat easier, like projecting my voice and answering the Q & A questions. Still, throughout the presentation I felt haunted by the shadow of time. I knew going in that I was aiming for 3:30 minutes in my background slides and by minute 9 I should be transitioning to my summary slide. Still, I found it hard to stick to and land these self-imposed time markers.

Hopefully, with more iterations, journal club presentations will also become more digestible.

Here are some other things I learned or experienced in this process:

~On PARPi:





~On comprehension:


~On rapamycin:



~On food:

~On having similar themes across papers your peers presented on:





Until next time!






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