17/09/2011 by lizit.

I spent 3 days last week at Med Soc 2011, the annual conference of the medical sociology group within the British Sociological Association. Before moving on to all the other stuff which fills the life of a DPhil student, I want to take time to reflect on the experience, including both my preparation for the event and the experience of the conference itself.

Med Soc 2011 was not the first conference I have attended. I have attended, and presented at, a number of postgraduate conferences and conferences focusing on learning and technology. In days gone by, I have also attended and presented at professional gatherings and led a fair number of training courses as well as being a OU teacher for over ten years. However, I was very anxious in the lead up to Med Soc. My anxiety had a variety of roots. Firstly, I was concerned about whether my research interests were really a match for the conference - the rational response was that my abstract had been selected for presentation, so it should be OK, but I was unsure how far I identified with medical sociology. Secondly, I was unsure if I would pass muster academically. Although I have a general background in social policy and practice, I do not consider myself a sociologist. Would my cover get blown? Would I understand what people were talking about and would what I had to say be relevant to others? Thirdly, a much more personal concern was about being in a place I didn’t know with people I had not met before. Would I cope with getting about the campus - I have some mobility problems - and would I achieve one of the objectives of attending a conference, networking?

Addressing my third concern first, I need not have worried. The needs I had stated on the conference registration had been noted and catered for making it possible for me to relax. People were friendly and helpful and the organisers had gone the second mile.

Returning to my first two concerns, I over prepared because I was anxious to hit the right note. In the end, I think my presentation was OK, but the earlier versions may well have been equally OK. A major lesson for me was the very wide variety of presentation styles and methodologies evident in the work being presented - everything from very scholarly - and sometimes verging on inaccessible (to me at least) accounts, to story telling with little or no academic references or specialist vocabulary. I also learned that there were people with a wide range of backgrounds present at the conference, presenting on many and various themes. Apart from the presentations in the autism stream, I heard presentations on stem cell research, knee pain and ageing, dyslexia, elder abuse, diabetic teenagers, contraception, midwifery practices, and health care commissioning, to name but a few.

Having attended various training sessions on how to present, I was interested in the different presentation approaches. As might be anticipated, most people used media of some sort - but not all. Most people talked to presentation slides, but some read their papers. Some slides were dense with text while others used images and few words - and I saw one presentation using prezi and cartoon strip dialogues. Among the most impressive were those using mixed media, where the voice of the participants were heard through audio or video clips. But at the end of the day, it was those presentations which told a story and where the presenter gave a personal account of their research that stayed with me.

What have I learned? Firstly, not to worry if my work is going to be acceptable - if it is a reputable conference and my submission has been accepted, then the subject matter is acceptable. Secondly, not to be so worried about meeting expectations in the way I present - it is far more important to communicate something meaningful and memorable than to worry about whether I am being academic enough or whether I have stated my conceptual and theoretical framework - in a 20 minute presentation everything and anything superfluous to the story needs to be filtered out. Thirdly, even if I am hearing a presentation about a subject I know nothing about, I can learn as much from how the subject matter is presented as from what has been said. Fourthly, people are genuinely interested in a wide range of different topics and in different approaches to those topics.

I’ve returned home energised by the experience and on the look out for another conference or two to submit abstracts to and to put into practice what I’ve learned this past week.

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03/03/2011 by lizit.

Let’s get this clear to start with. I enjoy presenting. From the response I get when I present, it would seem people enjoy my presentations, and sometimes even are challenged by them.

However, on the 3 occasions when I have presented since starting my DPhil, I have found myself getting nervous and generally just not doing as good a job as I know I can. The first time, I gave a presentation, I dried. OK, in the informal context of the lab meeting it didn’t really matter, and in some ways it was helpful finding out that I could recover and carry on and not lose face, but I do not suffer stage fright, so what was that all about.

The second presentation I gave was as part of a course focusing on communication skills. We used blogs, designed posters, wrote abstracts and gave a short presentation. That time, I didn’t dry but I was aware of being very nervous and not really saying things as clearly as I wanted to.

The third time was yesterday. I wasn’t as nervous, but I had over-prepared and had far too much material so I ended up rushing and missing out important aspects of what I had to say.

During the same period, I have given other presentations in other contexts and I have not had the same difficulties - in fact in other situations, I have enjoyed the experience and made a good job of the task. So what is it that affects me adversely in those situations when I am presenting to peers and colleagues as a research student?

I think part of the answer is what I wrote on my facebook page prior to yesterday:

I usually quite enjoy presenting, but get much more nervous doing stuff at Sussex than I do anywhere else - maybe I think they are more likely to blow my cover, or think I’ve got to be clever instead of just being me….

It’s that old enemy known as “imposter syndrome” - there is something about having to prove myself, so I over-prepare, include too much content, trip over my words, and almost turn into a gibbering wreck, only managing to perform at all because I have done so many successful presentations in the past and know the drill.

Another part of it, which was very evident yesterday, and is related, is losing confidence in my belief that I know what I am doing, and taking too much notice of the advice I am given without weighing up whether it will actually fit. What I should have done yesterday, given it was a research in progress presentation to my colleagues, was to focus on what I was doing, what my preliminary findings were, and why these were relevant. I had plenty to say and could easily have put together a tight, but challenging presentation. Instead, I not only put my presentation in context - it did need some kind of brief contextualisation, but not 6 slides worth - but I also threw in a summary of the tension between the medical and social models of disability to give what I was saying theoretical credibility. Some of the extraneous stuff was there because I chose to include it, but some of it was there because I had been through the slides with my supervisors and they had suggested how I might ‘improve’ the presentation. Their comments were valid and well meant, but rather than weighing them up and deciding what I had room for, I took all their ideas on board - after all, they are the experts - and did not use my own judgment or knowledge of timing.

To make matters worse, having got an acceptable presentation worked out, instead of pruning it to fit the time available, I added additional slides and re-ordered the sequence so that those slides which didn’t really fit had a proper place.

So I had too much material and inappropriate material. Combined with my nervousness which meant I took longer than necessary to settle into the presentation, which made the early part even more clunky than it might otherwise have been, no wonder I ran out of time, had to rush through stuff and omit the most interesting elements.

People are nice and forgiving. There was enough there to satisfy those present. But I know I can do better - and if I am going to do better I need to believe in myself and sort out my own priorities and be willing to prune in order to communicate what matters effectively.

At least, I know that I have enough material for about 3 different presentations if I slice it up appropriately, so I guess it wasn’t a complete loss!

Posted in imposter syndrome, presenting, ownership, learning | Print | 3 Comments »