The trials of journal club

I remember being taught effective highlighting skills in elementary school: “Find the important ideas,” my teacher advised. “Don’t paint the page.” My child self would absorb this information, then promptly proceed to highlight almost every single sentence--at the time, everything seemed important. “Effective highlighting” is a practice I still struggle with. I harbor a certain fear of skipping over important facts.

Preparing for the journal club presentation forced me to confront this fear. Preparing the slides was more difficult for me than I thought it would be, mainly because I had to whittle my paper down to its most important points. I had to decide which results to focus on and present. This was a highlighter moment, but I was determined not to paint the page this time (read: give a half hour long presentation). Instead, I found that redefining the task in less daunting terms, namely shifting my mindset from “find the most important points” to “tell a concise story” as our 20.109 instructors repeatedly told us, allowed me to better shape my presentation and put my slides together.

Completing my slides only cleared one hurdle, however. The real challenge lay in the execution--in the actual presentation itself. I’ve never enjoyed speaking to an audience of people, and the night before the journal club, I practiced over and over to the point where my roommate nearly kicked me out in frustration.

When I arrived at the room the next day, though, the cozy arrangement of the audience seating with respect to the projector screen made me feel less nervous. Having the presenter location squashed almost into the audience diluted some of the formality of presenting, and stress eating good food (thanks Leslie!) also helped to calm my nerves.

Though I was very nervous while giving my presentation, practicing the night before helped a lot. The last five minutes of presenting went by in a blur; my brain had somewhat melted into auto-pilot mode, and my mouth parroted the words I’d repeated to myself the night before. At the end of the presentation, I was expecting myself to melt into a quivering puddle during questions, but I survived those as well. In the end, the journal presentation was a good exercise in booting me out of my comfort zone, and I appreciate the learning experience.