The Goldilocks Dilemma of Presenting

    EverytimeIgetnervousitendtospeakamileaminute. BREATHE. Again. Every. Time. I. get. Nervous. I. speak. a. mile. a. minute. I naturally speak quickly, so when I get nervous, people basically can't understand me at all. This may because I come from New York and we naturally speak very quickly. It could also be because I speak Dominican Spanish, which is notorious for being incomprehensible because we speak so quickly. A trick I learned was to act as though after every word, there is a period. This makes you slow down to an understandable speed. I bring this up because we had Journal Club presentations this week, a public (is Zoom public? I mean you are alone physically, and yet you are talking to others...) presentation. Something you could get nervous about, something you have to be comprehensible in, or else no one understands your paper. The whole point is you want to speak about the amazing findings, and if no one can understand you, that kinda defeats the point... 

    On to another not so great point of online presenting, Zoom. Oh, Zoom. What do we do with you? How does one present in Zoom? An In-person presentation I know how to do. Glance at your slides once a while to bring people attention to the important parts of your speech, but not too much or you might just end up either looking like you are reading directly from your slides or actually just reading directly from your slides. Try to make eye contact with everyone, not too much or it gets a bit creepy. It is a Goldilocks situation, don't look at your notes too much, don't look at people too much, and don't look at your slides too much. I've finally started to maybe master this, and now we have to do it online. Now one might think that this makes it easier, but that person would be wrong. Yes, the anxiety of how you sit or what you physically do with your body is gone, but what do you do with your eyes. Do you look at your presentation or look at people's boxes or look into the camera to make it seem like you are looking at the people? Do you use your hands when presenting? I mean, you can no longer physically point to something. Do you make more facial expressions? Do you use your mouse or a pointer when pointing to things? Would love an answer, am asking for a friend.

    Besides the public speaking and presenting part, Journal Club is fun. You get to read a paper you find interesting, dissect it to find the most important parts, and share it with everyone. The paper I choose was "Rapid shifts in the age-specific burden of malaria following successful control interventions in four regions of Uganda." Kigozi, S., et. al. The main finding, I think, of the paper was that the control measure in Uganda to help reduce Malaria cases in infants is working, but it is also shifting the age burden to older individuals. This is amazing, not the shifting of the age burden, but the whole the control interventions are working. This means that fewer kids are dying of Malaria!!! The next question is now why is there a shifting of the age burden, and how do we stop it. Hopefully, I get to read that paper in the future. 

by Giramnah Pena-Alcantara

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