A number of Thursdays ago this semester I gave my first ever excellent, perfect, no-regrets presentation. Here I am, post-shower and maybe an hour pre-presentation:

(My grandmother gifted me that gorgeous necklace, as well as most of my other really pretty necklaces. My glasses I bought online for sub-$15, which is a new-ish favorite discovery of mine, as of a few years ago. The shirt I bought in California while visiting my partner’s family (I get overwhelmed by the lights in malls and my decision-making gets tripped up). The cardigan is my favorite old cardigan. It has a huge hole in the armpit I only recently sewed up. You can’t see the armpit hole over zoom. The creatures behind me are the viruses I am studying, looming, presumably in some blood, also looming.)

Here is my set-up:

If you look closely, you can spy the following items:

1. My clicker, even though my presentation was over zoom. Using the clicker allowed me to sit farther away from the screen, which made for a better image of my face, and, more importantly, prevented me from fidgeting with the computer in a way that would be audible to the audience over zoom.
2. A lamp, for nice lighting for the presentation (otherwise I look a bit dark and distractedly don’t match the lighting on the artist’s rendition of the subjects of my presentation).
3. My phone, plugged in, silenced, and on airplane mode with screen timeout turned off, with a timer set for the length of my presentation.
4. Paper and pen, out of the way but within reach, in case anyone made any suggestions I wanted to write down.
5. My to-do list notebook (pink on top of the stack of books)—nearby for comfort (I take it everywhere, including bed) but out of sight.
6. The Relentless Moon, the third book in the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal and the book I was reading at the moment, to remind me that there are nice things I enjoy I’ll get to do soon.

I took a lot of communications-focused courses at MIT. Almost all of them were about writing, which has served me extremely well. Though other classes I took did include one or two presentations, as far as I remember only one (6-unit (or half a normal course)) class actually explicitly focused on public speaking (not that I actively sought out additional public speaking educational opportunities—I didn’t), and that was 6.UAT—a course I did not fully appreciate at the time, because it was difficult for me in ways that made me uncomfortable, because public speaking made me uncomfortable, but which has turned out extremely useful for me since communication, including public speaking, has turned out to be a very important part of my job.

When I took 6.UAT I was very bad at public speaking, and I think I was still pretty bad at public speaking when the semester ended, though hopefully less bad. I remember learning to make eye contact, and not to fidget as much, and (from a particularly upsetting class where we viewed our presentations on camera) that my posture was just awful, a flaw I have improved at least a little through lots of yoga (though I imagine my posture is still awful, and I absolutely would not like to see myself on camera today either). That should tell you just about how low the bar was for me for starters.

6.UAT also taught me an extremely valuable lesson, perhaps the most valuable lesson, which I failed to actually incorporate into my presentations until just now. It is painfully simple—it almost hurts how simple it is. It is this:

✨ • ✨ • PRACTICE. • ✨ • ✨

Usually, when preparing for presentations, I focus almost entirely (or entirely) on my slide deck. I put together a silly number of slides. I make them all perfect. I memorize where they are in my presentation, including backup slides as potential responses to the many, many potential questions I’ve anticipated, which I used to fit at the end and lately, ever since I discovered hidden slides, have been slipping into their places in the narrative as hidden slides. Often, I have an epiphany about my work and generate some brand new figures specifically to add in as slides. This is probably productive for the project overall but it takes a very long time. Usually, I pull an all-nighter the night before, ostensibly to make sure my slides are ready, numerous, and perfect but actually, if I look deep into my soul, probably actually because I am usually very nervous before a presentation and have no work-life balance and a lot of trouble shutting off at night (as evidenced by me writing this blog post in bed after midnight). Then, for the actual presentation, I am exhausted, I have no concept of timing, everything takes longer than I expect, and I go over time, leaving very little room for questions and probably not a great impression overall. I almost never actually make it through all of my beautiful slides. At worst, I am preparing my slides up to the very minute before my presentation. At worst, (back when things were in person) I am late. This is my routine. This is how I am comfortable. (This is my design.)

Most of my presentations so far had been in front of a small group. Because most of our lab’s work happens in teams, I often present work to my labmates and collaborators. These presentations are largely informal, and I have gotten very comfortable with them, to the extent that I do not get nervous before them at all and prepare my slides during analysis in anticipation of presenting my work when the opportunity appears. I think I am very good at presentations during a small-group meeting. The only big change I am still working on is time management. I sometimes get less time in a meeting than expected and end up needing to go over time; I also sometimes allow too much conversation in the first half of a presentation and lose time for the second half.

I also, occasionally, present in front of the entire lab or in front of a broader but still lab-sized group of coworkers. These presentations are still a bit nervous, and I still sometimes have a lot of trouble sleeping or even disconnecting the night before. My slides are usually done, since I am mostly or entirely able to pull slides from the smaller update presentations I have already given to smaller groups of labmates. These meetings are usually an hour long, which makes time management easier, but they also invite (valuable!) input from more people, which makes time management harder. I need more practice presenting to larger groups—enough practice that I am not nervous at all and am able to be fully present to receive feedback and learn from the conversation generated by my work. Other than time management, I think I most need to work on confidently taking up space, including walking and eye contact, and figuring out something like gesturing rather than nervous awkward hand movements. (One thing I am quite happy with is that I am usually good at fielding questions, largely thanks to my massive overkill slide deck.)

Thinking back on it, I am quite happy with the amount of practice I’ve gotten presenting in different contexts in the lab. Public speaking has turned out to be so much more important than I expected when I took 6.UAT. I think I’ve gotten a lot better at it, and I am genuinely excited to keep improving: to keep growing in the contexts I already have experience in and to try on new contexts and get better and better. (And seeing the process as a valuable growth opportunity, rather than something awful I just have to get through, is already a massive step forward.)

This presentation in particular needed to go well. I was getting to present in front of an agency that funds our research, as well as PIs of other labs doing related and impactful work. I was representing our lab and I was representing the Institute. I also was worried, or in more accurate terms felt rather confidently, that it wasn’t supposed to be me, that this was a mistake, and that the people who know me would be expecting me to do rather poorly, or at the very least didn’t have particularly high expectations, which maybe gave me something to prove and at the very least made me rather desperately want to not disappoint those same people who had believed in me and given me the stage—and I really, really did not want them to regret believing in me. In other words, it was an opportunity and it was a big deal to me.

Like for larger group presentations, my slides were already largely prepared from previous presentations I had given in front of the lab and other coworkers, both in large- and small-group settings; I mostly just had to put the slides together into one coherent presentation, with a few updates in background information slides. This took longer than I expected but it didn’t take too long. I found myself done adjusting and adding slides the day before—an accident and a new record for me.

I had a whole half a day to sit with my slide deck and to practice (amazing!).

The presentation was to be eight minutes, with two minutes for questions. I was used to presenting this material in an hour-, at least half-hour-long presentation, so getting everything to fit was the main challenge. I practiced for several hours with my slides and my cell phone timer, interrupted only at one point by our building manager, who came by because we had mice. (Have mice—but at the moment they can’t seem to get past the inside of the hollow space behind the kitchen cabinet. The great benefit of this experience is that I now fully understand what authors like Neil Gaiman mean when they describe mice scratching inside the walls, and staying up late working is now that much spookier….)

I am very glad I practiced. My introduction, which I really did not have time for, initially took up three or four minutes—a full half of my allotted time. I cut it down to less than 30 seconds. Even then, I could never get through all of my slides, so I was forced to cut out most of the side paths and focus entirely on the main narrative. This was probably good for the project itself—the experience of cutting my presentation down showed me what I care about most within the wide scope of the project, and that the work was not weaker with more focus. By the end of a few hours I had the presentation down to a perfect and consistent eight minutes. I didn’t have a script, and I didn’t practice so much that my wording was the same each run-through, but I nailed down the verbal transitions that worked best at key moments when the audience could potentially get lost and identified specific slides that tempted me to go down juicy but time-consuming tangents side paths that would have been distracting and taken up too much time.

The actual presentation was very similar to my simulations. I sat in the same chair at the same place at our dining table, with my laptop the same distance from my face, and used my cell phone timer in the same way, and all went smoothly and on time. There were a few questions at the end, which were very easy to answer with the slides I had removed from the main narrative (and I was very happy to get an excuse to return to those slides). I got compliments afterward, and I got compliments from my direct supervisor and my PI, which is a very big deal for me. I don’t usually get that much positive feedback, and I certainly don’t expect positive feedback, so the experience made me very, very happy. It was a lovely confidence boost that spilled out into the rest of my work. The presentation itself and the audience’s interest in it renewed my excitement about my work, especially the project I presented on.

The ease of simulation, I think, is one of the primary nice benefits of giving a presentation over zoom. As an added benefit, the stage is (probably) a comfortable place in your home, and the audience is a small collection of faces in squares on your screen, rather than a crowd of people right in front of you. You can worry less about stage presence, or how you occupy space, or eye contact, or your weird hand motions, and you can focus more fully on the content of your presentation. Of course, parts of the usual challenges are still present—if you fidget, it will still be distracting; you need to make eye contact with your camera, if not the people in front of you; you still have a presence and your clothing and posture and voice still affect the audience’s experience of your presentation and perception of your work. Zoom also meant I did not need to travel for the presentation, which I thought was nice, though of course I cannot possibly know how many opportunities for “networking” connection with potential future collaborators and the human beings behind the names on my favorite papers and other amazing people who share my scientific interests I missed out on without the usual awkward cocktail hours or sitting next to someone or sharing an elevator—all experiences that I miss and look forward to having again someday in the future (along with speaking on an actual stage someday, which I do not expect to enjoy but which I am guessing will be a valuable growth experience).

Here is my advice on giving presentations:

1. Lots of pictures, minimal text. Unless you give your audience a few seconds of silence at the start of each slide, which I have never seen in an actual presentation, they are not going to be able to divide their attention between your slide and your spoken words without missing some of one or the other. Pictures are good. Figures are good. Titles and (short) labels are good. Any other information needs to justify the time it will take to process.
2. Provide a roadmap at the beginning of your presentation, and connect back to it as you go. One way to do this is to show a broad outline of your presentation in one of your first slides and repeat the points in the outline as slide or section titles, or echo those points verbally when you reach them. I have also seen people show their outline slide repeatedly throughout the presentation with already covered sections in grey text. I don’t like that as much. I also do not usually provide much of a roadmap and need to work on changing that.
3. Give your slides short, informative titles that both summarize what is on the slide and provide an idea of the relevant context or where you are in the presentation. Make sure that a person who zoned out for a minute can get caught up and place themselves by looking at the current slide.
4. When you present a figure, unless it is obvious (it probably isn’t), explain what each axis is, what each point represents, and the main takeaways of the figure. Most people don’t do this, which means that some fraction of the room might not understand the figure and might not feel comfortable asking, or at least might waste time trying to figure it out—any of which limits their ability to give feedback or engage in conversation and limits the value of your presentation both to them and to you.
5. Know what you want to get out of the meeting, and make sure you’re getting it. Literally sit down before the meeting and write down or type what you, personally, want to get out of it. Are you pitching a project? Are you asking someone for something? Are you looking for feedback? What are your priorities? Do your planned presentation and your slide deck reflect your priorities for the presentation? If conversation strays from your goals, you need to know to redirect it, which means you need to know exactly what you want.
6. Along the same lines, write down three or so main takeaways that you want your audience to remember. These takeaways will probably be related to your goals for the meeting. Build your narrative around those takeaways. State the takeaways explicitly—you might list them out in the end, or, especially in a shorter presentation, they might even be your roadmap slide and your title slides.
7. Bring a sheet of paper and a pen to write down any useful feedback or questions that you want to return to after the presentation is over.
8. If you are worried that you will need to redirect conversation, or that you won’t have enough time for everyone to deliver their feedback to you during the meeting, I have found it helpful to print out my figures and leave them around the room with pens or markers such that each person can reach at least one, preferably at least two (in case someone else already took one) copies (or even print one per person, though that is probably excessive). Mention at the start of your presentation that your audience can write any comments on these pages and return them to you at the end of the meeting; when you redirect conversation, invite people to write any unspoken feedback on the pages. Printed figures can make redirecting the conversation easier, both for you and for your audience. It can also help you get feedback from people who do not feel comfortable speaking in front of the entire group, and feedback that someone thought up after the particular topic had passed—and it gives people who are not engaged by your presentation something interesting to do that still achieves your goals.
9. Stop occasionally to ask the audience questions or solicit questions or feedback. (Pause a slightly uncomfortably long time after you ask a question to give people time to formulate their thoughts and potentially work up the courage to speak.) If you’re looking for feedback, asking for it directly will give you a better chance of getting it. Also, asking questions helps keep your audience engaged and gives you a better idea of whether or not they understand are engaged with what you are saying. (When I was TAing 6.005 (now 6.031), I learned that it is in addition important to phrase your request for feedback or questions in an inviting, open-ended way: “what feedback or questions do you have?” rather than “do you have any questions or feedback?”)
10. If there is something that fits naturally, it can be nice to start with or otherwise work in a relevant movie or TV clip or comic that somehow relates to your research, to make the experience more fun for everyone—and to improve your audience’s engagement with the material, make them more comfortable speaking up, and, if it’s done well, give them easier access to your key takeaways. Probably don’t do it before every single presentation, unless you want that to be your thing.

6.UAT had a lot of practice speaking assignments that you can peruse, if you’d like to try them. They are fairly varied and include a lot of different contexts—presenting with a slide deck, presenting a chalk talk (which I have not yet had to do in practice), presenting on your work, shorter persuasive pitches, presentations that are meant to connect to a lay audience, and so on.

As an aside, I have heard that acting or improv are great for improving public speaking—and one of my favorite instructors used to do theatre. I took an introductory acting class while I was at MIT, but it was absolutely not what I expected and I don’t think had much of an impact on my public speaking skills (though who knows!). One assignment I particularly remember involved all of us writhing on the floor in different directions while making loud silly sounds, literally rolling over each other and hitting the walls and rolling over each other again. The professor left the room for a long while in the middle of the exercise but we didn’t know what to do so we kept rolling. (Is there a lesson here? I don’t think there’s a lesson here.)

Some of my more corporate friends have (or had, before the pandemic) parties (I’m not kidding) where each attendee has to impromptu present (again, not kidding) on a completely unfamiliar slide deck. I don’t usually go to these parties (but I should, and I intend to when we can safely have parties again), but it seems like a great way to practice. (And how nice to look out for your friends’ public speaking skills!)

Here are some of the ways I hope to keep growing:

1. Knowing my priorities well enough to be flexible with time, if I get less time during a meeting than I expected.
2. Managing conversation to make sure that we are able to reach everything I prioritize.
3. Going out of my way to practice presenting to a larger group, such as at lab meeting. Presenting in front of a larger group makes me uncomfortable, but that is precisely why I should probably pursue the experience. I usually choose one-on-one or small-group mentoring over volunteer teaching opportunities, due to the massive amount of time and work that goes into preparing a lecture—but maybe I should make a point of volunteering to teach at least one or two lectures a year, perhaps on a topic that requires minimal preparation to minimize loss of research time.
4. Getting better at providing a visual and verbal roadmap to the audience.
5. Practicing presenting without a slide deck.

By far, the most important thing I’ve learned about presenting is that the priority is to convey information and have a dialogue with the audience toward some goal. Everything else—how you look, if you seem unsure or if you do not exude confidence in your own work, whether or not your explanations make sense to your audience, whether or not people zone out partway through your presentation and don’t or aren’t able to check back in—is either in service of or to the detriment of the goal. It is important to keep your priorities and your audience at the forefront, ahead of your self-esteem and your ego and your expectations. That’s not an easy thing to do. Most likely, in the end, the most important thing is the work you are presenting: your job is to give it the platform it needs in order to become whatever the world needs from it.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The rest of this blog post includes links with my Amazon referral code. If you click one and buy something, I get up to 4% of the price as commission. You don’t have to buy these things from Amazon—actually, you don’t have to buy these things at all. You can also support me by buying merch of my art, by buying me a campground store decaf coffee, or by simply reading and enjoying. Thank you!

Here are some things you can buy, if you see them here and you like them and you want them for yourself:

1. My clicker, which I bought for myself and then also for my parents and for my partner. It has a nice soft texture and is pleasant to hold and easy and intuitive to use and has not failed me through multiple years of presentations. The places where I present usually have their own clicker, or an option to not use a clicker, but I like having the flexibility to move around and I quite like having my own clicker that I know I like and am familiar with and can trust not to present (hah! a pun!) me with any surprises during what is probably (by virtue of being a moment in my life) an already stressful time.
2. My to-do list notebook, which for 2020 is pink because the pink one was on sale when I bought it. I have been keeping my to-do lists in a dedicated notebook for I think three or four years now. It is a very pleasant ritual. The notebook itself has changed from year to year, but I have finally settled on one and I think I will be buying this exact notebook from now on. I just bought my notebook for 2021. It is still shrink-wrapped and I am excited to open it on New Year’s—my own gift to myself. I might gift-wrap it. It is blue, dark blue, like the night sky. I like it very much.
3. The Lady Astronaut series, consisting of The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky, and The Relentless Moon. I like everything Mary Robinette Kowal writes. I had been looking forward to The Relentless Moon for a long time and was very excited to finally get to read it. It is a mystery story and it is extremely well-researched sci-fi and it is a very nice vacation (on the moon).