Read a hard copy of your paper!


In the past, public speaking has terrified me. I’ve had to give talks about all sorts of things and I had never given a presentation without freaking out beforehand. However, for some reason the journal club was different. As I was thinking about why I wasn’t terrified once I finished presenting, I came to the realization that confidence personally plays a huge role in how scary public speaking is. This was maybe the first time I had given a presentation like this where I actually prepared a while in advance and I knew the material I was talking about well. I think because I had confidence in my understanding of my journal article and how the authors got the results they did along with confidence in my ability to present the main points of it, this made the actual presentation much less scary.



The most helpful thing I did that made the whole project easier was printing out my paper. I know, it sounds super obvious. I initially read the article multiple times on my laptop and while I thought I understood what the paper was about, I was having a tough time getting key takeaways from it to present. When I printed out my paper, I blocked different areas and paragraphs with the general takeaway (background, proof of concept, etc.). Because we were given a rubric for rough talking points, this helped me figure out which parts of the article to include. I know it seems really obvious to print out the article so you can mark it up, but this was the first time in an assignment like this that I actually thought to do that, and that’s something I plan to do in future assignments.


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