Not today, sickness

Preparing for Journal club was an interesting time. I started off strong with a week head start but honestly, I think that was a bad idea in hindsight. My reasoning behind it was that I had a bunch of midterms before Journal Club, so it would be better to get the presentation prep out of the way early but it made it so that I was slightly distanced from the paper. In the day or two after I read the material I felt that I had a very good grasp on all the small details of the paper but as expected, as the days went on my grasp on those details grew looser. I think that for me, in the future I will prepare early, but not too early so that I forget some aspects of the paper.
In terms of nerves, I think I was good going into the presentation. Then the cough. The dry throat. The PANIC! I think in the future what I can do to better these situations is to prepare for any situation. I knew I was sick but assumed I’d make it through. Not the case, having water on hand, giving a disclaimer and remaining calm would have all been good ideas. Some helpful things I found to calm nerves were to look realize that everyone has to do this and that for the most part, people are glued to your slides! Not you! This was the first time I had presented a journal and the first time I had ever watched any journal club presentations. I think having this experience, even though it was less than ideal, will help me both in journal club presentations as well as general presentations in the future.

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