No matter how many times I think I’m finally comfortable with giving a presentation or public speaking, I never actually end up enjoying it. I always go in thinking this will be the time I’m calm, relaxed and eloquent, but inevitably I forget every other word I’m trying to say.

This time was no different, although maybe it was a step in the right direction.

I practiced my journal club presentation about 12 times all the way through, and got to where I would finish at 10 minutes plus or minus 5 seconds every time. But once I actually got up to present, and my the good ol fight or flight response kicked in I started talking about twice as fast. I normally appreciate the boost of energy, I’ve basically trained the last 7 years of my life to get that jump as large as possible for track and cross country. But in a situation where you want to be cool and collected, this was the opposite of what I needed. So when I got 5 minutes in I realized I was about two slides ahead from where I was when I was practicing. The clock was not agreeing with me.

The great part about that is that it gave me another nice boost of adrenaline…...yay. It was easier to stay more focused this time as I had gotten a little more comfortable presenting, but I still needed to slow down how fast I was talking. I tried to slow down as much as I could, and even ad libbed a little about the future implications at the end, but I still ended up finishing about 50 seconds earlier than I had when I was practicing. Oh well, it's not that many points. And I guess that’s the point of doing these presentations, so you can figure out what your strengths are and what you need to improve.

On the bright side I did learn that I really like making the figures for the presentation. Making the figures also helps me understand the material a lot better. Maybe by making figures, I am basically doing everything I can to make scientific papers seem like picture book so I can pretend I actually understand what's going on. Basically I'm trying to turn

into

.