Not late this time!

Which isn't to say that I didn't procrastinate on my journal club presentation like p21 expression in response to DSBs in BRCA2- cells.

20.109 has really made me appreciate all the work I did back in high school research class. I may still fidget, still speak too softly, and still (sigh) say "um" far too much, but I don't have nearly the stage fright that I did the first time I had to present science for a class in tenth grade. This familiarity may have made me take a few more shortcuts that I ought to have: I never ran through the entire presentation in one go, which resulted in me going over time by nearly a minute.

I found that my process for compiling the presentation was rather more inefficient than my sleep schedule would have liked. I read through the paper, highlighted key terms and ideas, and jotted down takeaways from each paragraph; and still couldn't string together a coherent purpose for the research I was presenting. I stared at the paper for so long before I figured out that the authors had, apparently, presented their results in the other that they performed them, instead of what one would think would be the logical order — going through the pathway they were testing from upstream to downstream.

It felt quite strange, and very liberating, to present someone else's research. In all the research presentations I did before, I was presenting, often desperately promoting, my own work to someone who had control over some part of my life, whether it was a grade for a class (MIT has since increased my immunity to poor grades) or placement in a competition. I'd grown used to glorifying results and defending shortcomings; for journal club, I merely had to explain everything as it was.

I'm dreading confronting video evidence all of my presenting flaws and writing the Mod 2 report —but I am hyped for virus batteries next week!