White-boards and BREATHE


Every time I reread my article, I became more confused. I would think I understood, but then find that I couldn’t follow the steps that I thought I knew and understood. I felt like despite defining and understanding the “vocabulary” I was clueless to the actual happenings of the article. Luckily, I received a white board for FREE from SDS (10/10, would recommend).

I carried this mini-white board (and the beautiful colored markers) around with me for 5 days and mapped my article out. I mapped each section, then how the sections flowed together, then how different topics in the article I still didn’t understand was happening, and lastly which information I was going to actually present (because this article really had SO much). This was so critical for my ability to understand the information and present it in a digestible way.

Unfortunately, I was incredibly nervous about this presentation. And I am already kind of a spazzy person so when I got up to give my presentation I could tell that I was talking waaaaaay too fast and not as clearly and confidently as I wanted to. I would recommend that future 109ers take 3 deep breaths once they are up at the front, clicker in hand, and then press start on the timer. I feel like this can just help calm nerves in a way that is critical to presentation ability.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 tha
Read more

The Journey of A Revision Begins With Office Hours

First major assignment of 20.109 is done, locked in the books. Looking back at it, the entire process from the initial draft to the revisions that were made couldn't have been possible without the availability of the staff and the time spent in office hours.  To the Comm Lab Fellows, thank you for meeting with us at a day's notice. For sitting down and break our abstract apart. For showing us what worked well and what didn't. For helping our abstract go from needs improvement to significantly improved. To Leslie, thank you for bearing with the hundreds of emails we sent your way. For patiently replying to us anytime and every time we needed tips and suggestions. For spending hours in office hours before the first draft was due. For meeting to go over last minute questions before the revision was due.  And to my lab partner, Tooba, thanks for sitting with me late into the night to tear apart our on work. For working with me to identify our weakness and create a s
Read more
The research proposal was a really great exercise in identifying a current problem and potential, feasible solution within a practical time period. While the other modules introduced and familiarized us to the actual lab work and etiquette needed to answer a research question, the goals, quality checks, and troubleshooting considerations weren't thought of by us. That being said, this research proposal was a more difficult assignment in many regards. Browsing through the discussion sections of numerous papers I was interested in gave me an idea of what a next step would be, but considering that I had no real expertise in any of those areas it was still difficult to identify what specific assays would be needed for those next steps. Because of this, I also had a hard time deciding on a general area for my topic. In this regard, listing 5 areas and then trying to blend them with my partners' helped us define a creative topic area that we could look more into. The timescale for
Read more