The internet is your friend

When I first heard about Journal Club presentations, I was definitely intimidated. While the prospect of presenting
itself wasn’t terrifying (my high school had actually required a public speaking course to graduate), presenting on material that I was not familiar with was. When I am not fully confident in my understanding of a topic, having to present it to others feels extremely nerve-wracking. Initially, I wasn't confident in myself to be able to understand the ins and outs of a real scientific paper. In my first read of the paper, I was pretty confused.

However, after each subsequent read through and continuously looking up all the terms and methodologies I didn’t know, I slowly got a better and better understanding of the paper. This took hours, but I realized that with the knowledge I have accumulated so far in 20.109 and 7.05 and with the help of my friend, the internet, I could do this. 

 When putting together my presentation, I constantly had to ask myself, what is the minimal amount of information that I need to include to make my listeners understand what I’m talking about. I didn’t want to overload people with so much information that they would start to zone out. But I also wanted to include enough information so that it was interesting and informative. For example, some of the specifics of the methodologies that I found really interesting, I did not include in my presentation and instead saved them for the Q&A portion, since they weren’t necessary for the overall understanding of the paper. 

 Speaking of the Q&A portion, it was the part that I was especially dreading because it was the hardest to prepare for. I didn’t want to get up there and be like this:

To prepare for the Q&A, I tried anticipating questions that could be asked and in my BE Comm Lab meeting, asked the instructor what questions they would ask me so I could prepare for some answers beforehand. In my actual presentation, I still got answers that I hadn’t expected and didn’t completely know the answer to, but I realized that it was okay. As an undergraduate presenting a research paper written by graduate students, I wasn’t expected to know everything, but instead, be able to give a general answer that showed my understanding of the core concepts of the paper. 

Overall, I enjoyed the Journal Club presentations. From understanding a real technical paper to practicing how to present it, I felt like I had accomplished a lot by the end of the whole process.

-Julia Pei

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