Blog Post #2

Edit 4/18 (Forgot to put my name): Justin Liu
Originally published 4/8

The Journal Club assignment marked my first time truly understanding a published journal article. Sure, previous UROP positions had required me to get some background information on the project by scanning a few papers. However, all I really did for those was scan the introduction and figures and then have my supervisor actually explain it to me. Thus, I was very unsure of what to expect for this presentation. Will other people care about my presentation? Will I be interested in the material? Will I even be able to understand it? It turns out that the answer to the second and third questions was yes, but I can't exactly speak for the first question.

While working on creating the presentation, the most surprising thing was how much of the authors' data that I had to cut out. I felt very reluctant to leave out charts and data that I understood, and it took a lot of mental gymnastics to convince myself that some of my slides did not actually contribute much, and considering the first run through of my presentation took nearly fourteen minutes while also speaking at a hundred miles per hour, I knew I didn't have a choice; ten minutes is not a lot of time at all. Being able to create a coherent story about the paper's data while cutting so many slides proved to be a huge challenge, but in the end I think I was pretty successful.

Prior to my presentation, I found that focusing on other people's talks was very helpful in calming my nerves. I was able to get my mind off of the silent countdown to my turn, and ask thoughtful questions about the hard work other people had also done. When it did come time though, the jitters were definitely still present. I had never really been one to get nervous for class presentations, but for some reason this one was different. I felt it in my legs a bit, and I was looking at my notes a lot less than my previous multitude of rehearsals. In the end, however, my worries were for naught. With my grade still to be determined, I thought that I did well, and my practice had paid off. Hopefully one day I'll be able to apply everything I learned during this assignment to my own successful research.

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