The impending heat death of the universe can't match the slowly impending dread of Wednesday 4/10/19 circa 1:00 pm

I haven't presented my journal club presentation, but even in the midst of prep I can't help but feel a certain dread in presenting for Journal Club. I've spent countless hours rifling through my paper and googling every single thing that sounds remotely important in fear of the questions that may come.

My biggest fear is veering away from the game plan. Ten minutes is not much given the density of information in these research papers, and the it's a bit different presenting in front of everyone compared to shouting at your window in your room. However, I'm kinda excited.

Excited to get it over with. On the real though, I am kind of excited. I presented my research to my lab (50+ people including my PI) over the summer and admittedly....it didn't go as well as I wanted it to be. I spoke way too fast and went under the allotted 7 minutes (which isn't as big as a deal, as no one in my lab like these group meetings). My PI asked me a question, and I kind of wilted under the pressure because he looked bored with all the other UROPs presentation and seemed to not pay attention. It took me by surprised to say the least.

Thus, I see journal club as a way to redeem myself. Hopefully, I won't make a fool of myself again.

Who knows, maybe I'll freeze up and breakdown in front of everone. There's a first for everything.

So it goes. Lol.

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