Journal Club Reflection


Another week has passed at home, and I'm amazed at how fast time passes even though I'm no longer wrapped up in all the activities and MIT-ness that came with being on campus. At school, I felt like there was no time to take a breath and catch up with life always pulling us forward. Now at home, I physically cannot move anywhere, and all the time that I must have by not running to and from classes or extracurriculars is not spent most productively. I feel my mind is still constantly running as I worry about assignments, my grades, cancelled summer plans, the growing number of confirmed cases in my area, and my friends who are in places that are even more affected.  With all these things to think about, I find it hard to focus on being productive, especially in preparing for this major journal club presentation assignment.

Having never presented at a journal club before, I felt this task to be very daunting, and my personal aversion to presentations coupled with using Zoom to complete this assignment only made it more stressful. Even though a recorded presentation should have, in theory, been less painful than a live presentation in front of my classmates, I think I found it to be equally frustrating as if I were to prepare for presenting in a classroom. After reading through my paper multiple times and crafting my slides, I thought I had a good understanding of the message that I needed to communicate. However, when I started to record myself, it was extremely difficult to find the right words to clearly explain what I wanted to, and I found it surprisingly challenging to stay under the 10 minute time limit. I initially thought 10 minutes would be more than enough time because it feels like forever when I am giving a presentation, but I realized that it was a really short amount of time to explain a whole paper.

Using Zoom, I also found myself trying to make my presentation perfect because I could start over when I needed to. I quickly realized this was a bad mindset, however, because I became easily frustrated over little mistakes such as pronouncing words. Finally, after running through the presentation multiple times and taking breaks in between to reset myself, I decided my final product was never going to perfect, just like in a live presentation. I think using Zoom induced a new type of stage fright because although it was just me and my laptop, I was painfully more conscious of everything that I said and how I looked in my zoom window. It was also very painful to listen to myself once I finished recording. While I had many technical difficulties with using Zoom, from my computer shutting off in the middle of one run through to the video not saving correctly in another, I think this allowed me to practice a lot more than I would have had if we were on campus. Overall, this assignment was certainly not enjoyable, but this type of verbal communication is a necessary skill and it's great that we can practice this in 20.109. As I start on my research article this week, I think I will enjoy the switch back to written communication.

-Wenting

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