Let me tell you something, your girl Sam Leff here is not built for public speaking. The week leading up to journal club was quite stressful. Picking my article was the easy part; I looked for an article which had methods I was familiar with -- for me, this was an article with DAPI and YH2AX staining since that is what I do in my lab. And while making my slides took time, it was doable, and I was still feeling okay about journal club. The trouble really came when it was time to practice presenting. Imagine this...you're walking down your dorm hallway, and from this one room, you just hear this crazy person saying the same 10 minute speech over and over for at least an hour. For my floor mates, this is a reality. I kept practicing over and over. Then, it came time to present and all the sudden I was Josh from Drake and Josh when he was a weather person. I was so nervous to present. But let me tell you something; I survived. I ended up not using any of my notes or perfectly replicating my 10 fold practiced speech. But that's okay. Because I had practiced, I knew where I wanted the talk to go, so winging it kind of worked for me. If I had to do it again, my advice would be not to bring any notes in with you. I found them distracting, and I ended up rummaging through them and tripping myself up more because of them. Plus, you're presenting to your peers so there's no need to be anxious! Just read your article, understand it, and practice so you know what you want to say. It's okay if you don't say your talk exactly as practiced -- you'll survive.
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