panic attack
I have to give a presentation on my research to a group that I'll be collaborating with. The presentation is tomorrow and I still haven't analysed the data I've been whining about for the past THREE frickin' months! I did attempt to analyse it at one point, but I was so sloppy that I may as well not have done anything, since I have to redo it from scratch.
The week after next, I have to speak at a more open, inter-departmental seminar series. For an hour and a frickin' half (although that includes interruptions and questions, so hopefully people will have lots of (easy) questions). The last time I analysed my data was when my advisor spoke there, which means I have barely anything to add to what he said.
Sometime in July, I'm supposed to have my first thesis committee meeting. Plus, I have to first organise the date and time, which involves harrassing faculty (at least they're not teaching faculty, so there shouldn't be too much of a problem with it being summer, or maybe there will be...). It's not an exam, at least (in theory), but I'm still worried because I don't have much to show for the past year (well, I have about 3 months worth of work, but I don't know how to account for the other 9).
Then, I just found out yesterday that the abstract OVS and I wrote for the conference in Vaguely Ancestral Foreign City in September was accepted for an oral presentation. Theoretically, this is good, and my advisor is happy, but it means I have to talk in front of real scientists who know about my field. I feel kind of bad not being enthusiastic, too. I was tempted to tick the box that said "only consider me for a poster, not an oral presentation" when I submitted the abstract, but my advisor was hoping for a talk. And now, I think OVS might be kind of jealous that I'm the one who gets to present our data, since he'll have left the lab by then. The scariest part of this talk is that we wrote the abstract assuming we would have something less vague to talk about when the time came, but it's only 2 and a bit months away! What have I accomplished in the last 2 (or 3, or 6) months? Absolutely nothing! And a conference requires actual results; at least for the first three things, I can include all the stuff that didn't work, and way too many details about the analysis and problems and future plans.
4 Comments:
You can always give "work-in-progress" type talks. You know, ones where you talk a bunch about the kind of data you plan to collect and what you hope to see. Those aren't the most exciting, but they're a lot better than having nothing to say.
the first three are all definitely going to be work-in-progress things, but they're informal enough not to matter.
The conference talk is only 12 minutes, so I could probably fill it up with preliminary results, it just would be better with more definitive results. My advisor still thinks I'll have real results by then, too...
Is it the content that scares you the most, or the presentation of it? If presentation, there are always beta blockers. (Yes, seriously.)
it's more the content, unfortunately. There aren't any pills that would make me magically have done enough work to present. For some reason, talking in front of people doesn't actually scare me excessively, as long as I know what I'm talking about.
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