Journal club - pretend like you're having a conversation
I just finished giving my Journal Club presentation for Module 2 yesterday - it was definitely a worthwhile experience from which I learned a lot.
The paper that I chose was really dense with lots of figures and a huge supplement, so it was challenging to figure out a way to pick the most intriguing data to show within the span of 10 minutes. After reading the paper the first time, I went back through it and noted down which figures really caught my attention, and which ones I thought would be important for telling a cohesive story. I then made slides out of all of these figures, but when I tried to practice presenting for the first time, it took almost 30 minutes to get through all the material I had prepared... I then went back through the slides and tried to trim them down to a few key experiments that really made up the crux of the paper. This was definitely one of the most difficult parts, as explaining other people's experiments took much more time and thought than I had initially anticipated.
I also got nervous leading up to my presentation, and especially when other people were presenting and I was waiting in anticipation for my turn. Practicing definitely helped with the nerves, as it helped me know what to say and when, so I could operate on autopilot during my presentation. Remembering to breathe also helped calm my nerves. One of the most useful pieces of advice that I received was to pretend like I was having a conversation with my friends and just telling them about a cool paper that I read. This also helped take some of the pressure off of the journal club presentation.
Overall, I think I definitely learned from being able to read and critique others' papers, and identify key experiments to be able to communicate them to others in a concise way.
-Pranav
The paper that I chose was really dense with lots of figures and a huge supplement, so it was challenging to figure out a way to pick the most intriguing data to show within the span of 10 minutes. After reading the paper the first time, I went back through it and noted down which figures really caught my attention, and which ones I thought would be important for telling a cohesive story. I then made slides out of all of these figures, but when I tried to practice presenting for the first time, it took almost 30 minutes to get through all the material I had prepared... I then went back through the slides and tried to trim them down to a few key experiments that really made up the crux of the paper. This was definitely one of the most difficult parts, as explaining other people's experiments took much more time and thought than I had initially anticipated.
I also got nervous leading up to my presentation, and especially when other people were presenting and I was waiting in anticipation for my turn. Practicing definitely helped with the nerves, as it helped me know what to say and when, so I could operate on autopilot during my presentation. Remembering to breathe also helped calm my nerves. One of the most useful pieces of advice that I received was to pretend like I was having a conversation with my friends and just telling them about a cool paper that I read. This also helped take some of the pressure off of the journal club presentation.
Overall, I think I definitely learned from being able to read and critique others' papers, and identify key experiments to be able to communicate them to others in a concise way.
-Pranav
Comments
Post a Comment