One of my advanced graduate students sent me this email:<\/p>\n
\u201cI practiced for the [oral presentation of our] defense multiple times and I felt good about the intro without reading from script. At the defense, I stumbled pretty badly. This has happened on multiple occasions where I feel good beforehand, but ultimately stumble. I was wondering if you had any tips or why you think that always happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here is how I responded —<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my own experience, the two main reasons why I stumble even when I\u00a0am well-rehearsed are 1) the story is still not really distilled into its\u00a0clearest iteration (so I can’t make the logical connections because they\u00a0aren’t really there) and 2) I am worried about the timing or the audience or\u00a0something like that (I am not focused, I am \u00a0not in the moment and “ready”\u00a0to perform because I am distracted for some reason).\u00a0Also being tired — mentally or physically \u00a0— is awful for any performance.”<\/p>\n
“I think that #1 is just something that needs A LOT of work — way more than\u00a0we think. And #2 is a matter of self-discipline that comes with some\u00a0experience, where we finally feel confident about how effective we are\u00a0(because we have seen it happen so many times by now) and because we have\u00a0received enough feedback to know that we are good speakers and that our\u00a0stories are worthy and make sense.”<\/p>\n
“We have to work super hard on our stories and we have to build up our confidence and experience. To offer a real example — I coached a postdoc on a job talk this past week for close to 10 hours. I know this person to be a gifted speaker and writer; he is thorough; etc. When he presented the talk to me the first 5 times the story seemed out of focus; random slides with random points being made; like a laundry list. No story. He worked very very hard over a couple of weeks to pull this talk together — major surgery to the storyline; the positioning of his work and where it fits into his field; the visuals; the transitions. The talk came together beautifully, but it was a major effort. I knew that once the story was crystal clear, he would deliver it beautifully.”<\/p>\n
“I hope this helps!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my advanced graduate students sent me this email: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-great-presentations","tag-ghc12"],"yoast_head":"\n