Nerves

Happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend. Aside from finishing the journal club presentation, I went on a bike ride and went to the store and ended up buying a ridiculous amount of Easter candy because I was really, really craving Cadbury eggs.

Anyways, the Journal Club presentation was a very interesting experience for me. I quite enjoy making presentations - putting together the slides and seeing a cohesive finished product gives me a decent sense of accomplishment. Actually presenting, on the other hand, is not as satisfying. No matter how “easy” the presentation is - in this case, my only audience was my computer - I still get worked up, have a shaky voice, and trip over my words. About 5 minutes after I finished recording, my heart rate was around 140. This semester I have had quite a few presentation opportunities, and each time I try to make improvements, but my nerves seem to always get the best of me. I have a few more presentations before the semester is over, so hopefully, I can keep working on my public speaking. 

I thought the paper I read was interesting, as it discussed a new computer program for single cell transcriptome sequencing. I continue to be amazed by the computing methods that can be applied to biology and how easy it can become to model complex systems. While the paper was interesting, there were a few areas that could have been improved upon. One of the things that bothered me the most was having figures in the paper that were never discussed in the text. Going forward with my own writing, I will make sure I never do this because I now understand how frustrating it is to be a reader with little previous knowledge on the subject, trying to interpret figures with no explanation. Overall, this presentation was a good reminder of places I can improve upon in both my presentations and writing.

I hope you all have a great week, see you in class!


Hannah

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