Practice makes improvement: becoming more comfortable presenting

Hello again! We are back in Wisconsin and it has been good to be back! Something we have been working on since we got back is practicing our presentations for the upcoming symposium for summer physics and chemistry research students. I have really appreciated practicing the talks as much as we have, because it has helped me become more comfortable with what I need to say so that I can spend more energy focusing on how I want to present things. This has been really important to me because one of my major goals with this presentation is to make it fun and accessible for a broad audience. As a result, this means that I feel strongly about being able to be relaxed enough to be able to say something in a specific way or tone.

Something else about preparing for the presentations that has been really cool is noticing the difference between how comfortable I am this year compared to when I presented my research last year as a rising sophomore. I think part of this comfort comes from the personal development I worked on throughout the year in becoming more confident. I think another significant reason for this change came from the fact that I now have more experiences in research environments. For example, last year I was super nervous to present my talk because I focused on a lot of background information like what a chemical bond is and the Bohr model of the atom. I felt like because I was planning on present information that was less complicated, people would think less of my presentation. But this year, having seen more talks and having had more opportunities to present my own research, I felt really confident about how I wanted to present my research in a really accessible way. It has been really empowering to notice this change in my perspective, and it gives me hope that I will continue to grow and become even more confident about myself as a researcher.