just be(C)ause you(R) (I)nitial de(S)ired ex(P)ectatIon wasn’t met, it doesn’t make it bad (R)



I don’t know if this was surprising necessarily because I already knew from reading previous papers, but it is difficult to understand papers. You have to read them several times to fully understand what is going on and even then, discussing with other people (or in my case, one other person, the Queen Leslie) to get the full picture. Even though I knew I was going to have to have several read-throughs, I am still surprised when I don’t understand everything after the second time. I think with time though, as both I read more papers and learn more about biological engineering, I will understand faster and this shock won’t feel so shaking.
Also, going first is always a bit rough partly because you have a little less time, but mostly because you don’t know exactly what you are supposed to do in your presentation until you see a couple examples from your peers. Meeting with Leslie beforehand really helped me out and I am so very thankful for her help. She helped me understand the paper better when we talked about it and gave me a better direction for my slides.
For next time, for sure, I need to practice a lot more. Usually, I just practice to myself. So I say the words but not to an audience. I think for presentations moving forward, I should always practice in front of an audience (even if it’s just a few people) to get better acquainted with what I am saying and to be comfortable saying it aloud. That being said, once I got up there and was a couple slides into my presentation, I felt more at ease and was able to better present the data. I think getting over that initial energy barrier of fear of starting to present is the most important in giving a good, flowing presentation. Taking deep breaths and telling myself it actually isn’t that bad (because it really isn’t all that bad) before I start would help calm those nerves.

Overall, it was actually a really good experience for me presenting for journal club, even if it didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted, and I am thankful for that.

Ayşe Güvenilir

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It BE like that sometimes (R)

Image
The hardest part of scientific writing for me is a combination of a lot of different things. Finding the reason for the research that is not too broad (aka, cancer in general), but is also not too specific (glioblastoma, since, while our cells were from glioblastoma, we didn’t directly study this). The implications and future-works section was rough for similar reasons to the background and motivation, but it was slightly easier since it was based off of our own data. Also, compiling information to include in the background and motivation is really rough. I think making the figures and analysis was a little easier, though it was definitely very time consuming. It be like that sometimes I guess. I did enjoy making the figures in MATLAB though! Was a lot of fun for me. Something that really helped our team was making a to-do list of everything that needed to get done. I think this is something I will implement for writing my full research report for Module 2....
Read more

Great way to end the semester

I wasn’t quite sure how much to trust the teaching staff when they said our class was going to get a lot better after the research article, but it actually did. This final module was a lot of fun. As an undergrad, most of my experience with science comes from going to classes in large lecture halls or performing the same experiment over and over again for my UROP supervisor. Coming up with a novel bioengineering idea from scratch was very different from most class assignments and helped remind me why I chose this major in the first place (definitely a necessary reminder while struggling through 20.320 and questioning my life choices). The research proposal was still a lot of work, but the work involved reading research articles about a topic I was interested in and brainstorming with my lab partner. 20.109 has been a really wonderful class (probably my favorite technical class I’ve taken at MIT). The instructors and TAs were amazing, and I think that the things I lear...
Read more

Gearing up for grad school

As I walked out of the classroom after the Mod3 research proposal presentation I felt a massive sense of relief and pride. The last major assignment of 20.109 was over – I had done it! The road had been far from smooth – the mod2 report had been a towering mountain that I still can’t believe I was able to scale. The mod3 presentation had been an intimidating concept – it was definitely overwhelming at first to have to narrow down literally all of biology and select a single topic of interest. However, once my group and I had an idea we were able to have a great time discussing and fleshing out the concept. Do I think it was the greatest idea for a research project ever? Probably not, but I think it was much better than I could have come up with before starting 109. Although it was hard to find enough time to dedicate to the proposal and to sleep with a busy final week for all my classes, I’m proud of myself and my team for the work that we put in and the resulting p...
Read more