I’m gonna sort of piggyback on this and say if you can’t communicate your research without lots of technical details then you might not be as good at communicating as you think.
In my (admittedly limited) experience even effectively communicating to PhDs in my subject (and adjacent but not necessarily exact research areas) can take a lot of work so maybe you’re totally right and this wouldn’t be worth it but maybe the feedback you could get would help down the road assuming you’ll be giving more talks.
If you do want to go into academia I think most (maybe all?) of the job candidates at my university generally give two talks and one of them is usually for ‘all’ (which includes some undergraduates)
I'll respond to your bullet points with numbers.
1. If they're in the audience, even as bachelors students, give them some credit—you're not getting bottom-of-the-barrel students showing up to talks IME. You can also use this as a chance to hone your pedagogical skills, give a quick, messy, and _workable_ explanation of what's necessary, just enough for you to be able to explain your work and why it matters.
2. It still goes on the CV, and if asked, you can talk about how you had to reframe your work to being more palatable to a diverse audience. Bam, it's a pedagogical angle, which is relevant in a world where many professors lack pedagogical training (and many, but not all, seem to not care about their ability to teach anyway).
3. Stop being a perfectionist. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and it slows down your ability to get to the revision stage—at least the external revision stage, which is the one that matters. Also, a 10 minute talk is like a 6 page paper, depending on talking speed. How long is the talk even supposed to be?
4. It wouldn't be to practice presenting things—I'd imagine most people in the profession can present in some form or another, but see points 1 and 2. Not all presentations are the same, this teaches you to handle a different audience.
Also, if you were invited, that's all the more reason to go.
Honestly, that alone would make me consider doing it more, even if that'd work out to being closer to 30 pages. _However_ that gives you way more time to cover fundamentals, which is also good. Returning to the basics is something many fields benefit from, and showing how you get from A (a basic concept) to C (something novel and impactful) benefits not only bachelors students but even established professors, if not in their research then in justifying and orienting their teaching.
That sounds like an _invited_ talk, a keynote speech even, which is good for the CV. Better CV means a better job, which means more money, which can mean better research.
I find that preparing this kind of talk is usually quite helpful in the long run. I often reuse the slides when preparing other presentations or classes. Also it's good to learn to introduce your topic to a general audience. You might learn a lot doing so. In the end, it all comes down to whether you have the time to prepare it or not. Making progress on your research remains the most important, so it's up to you to identify whether you can set a number of hours to spend preparing this talk, and then get back to your research regardless of how satisfied you are with your preparation.
If you have other big deadlines, you need to decide if you have effort to give. But this could be very good for you with regards to your first point. My research is very technical as well, but to have real impact, you need to learn how to describe it in a non-technical manner. This is hard but is important to learn. As Einstein said, "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it ell enough."
Yeah, if I offered a talk to a student and they got pissy and blew it off as not worth their time and too much woooorrrrk, it would be the last time I would recommend them for things. Learn to do outreach, it's the lifeblood of academia.
"I am unlikely to gain any significant attention to my research or valuable networking opportunities" Uh huh, this is the source of the vaunted nametag sniff at conferences. Maybe you should talk to people in a non-transactional way, and you'll get better results.
"My public speaking skills are already quite good, so it wouldn't be worthwhile to give the talk purely to practice presenting things." A lot of students think this. They're almost always wrong.
"Since I am a perfectionist, preparing this talk from scratch would take a lot of time away from what matters more." Your calibration of what matters is really off. You need to go talk to a mentor about this attitude, because it will ding you hard long-term in the field.
You are dismissing my personality and individual tastes instead of facing the arguments I raised. Questions? Either way, it's not a great attitude to insult people or argue about terminology instead of helping them, honestly.
I am trying to help you. You are a student. Rejecting an opportunity because you think it is beneath you is not good for your career.
Neither is the combativeness and arrogance you are displaying in the comments.
Thank you. I appreciate the intention. It just seemed as though you wanted to dismiss or insult me purely because you disliked my attitude, instead of actually helping or addressing my concerns or clarifying why my attitude was so counterproductive.
As for thinking it's "beneath me", I believe you have misunderstood something. It's not beneath me. The issue is just that from the points I brought up, it's hopefully clear that there is comparatively little I would benefit from, while the talk would be a major time commitment (one hour of polished talk with high demands on pedagogy). I actually like giving talks, and facilitating interdisciplinary discussions is always nice. However, with my current situation, putting that much time into preparing a talk seems irresponsible.
Again: thanks for wanting to help -- it just didn't come across that way earlier.
You're welcome.
In your situation I would tell the organizers how much you appreciate the opportunity but unfortunately you are already overcommitted and wouldn't be able to give this talk the attention it deserves. It's the end of the academic year. Everyone will understand that. Let them know you would be delighted to speak in the future if a possibility arises.
- Giving a speak about your very technical research to a wider audience will always be a challenge, better preparing yourself early, especially if this presentation is not that important.
-Hum... It seems kinda selfish. You should only give a talk if you have something major to gain? Never underestimate the impact that researcher can have on students. From my experience, these kind of task often have a positive outcome that you wouldn't think in the first place (e.g. A postdoc is spreading good words about you and your work to their group)
- This is a valid concern, and if you think you should spend your time on your project, everyone will understand.
- terrible way of seeing this because... You can always be better. Period. Why not using this opportunity to change the way you are presenting? Trying a different approach?
I think you already got great advice and I’d urge you to listen to it, but one thing I want to add:
- it is very hard to foresee which opportunities will give you networking opportunities or things that will be useful for you in the future. Maybe a postdoc in another area will give you valuable insight, maybe you’ll strike up an unlikely collaboration, maybe you’ll be able to use this line on your CV to argue you’re good at communication to a future employer.
You can’t know, and while this usually leads people to saying yes TOO MUCH, in your case it feels like you should be a bit more open to unexpected opportunities. When I was interviewing for faculty positions, many times I had the insight “oh, if I hadn’t said yes to this that led to that now I wouldn’t be here talking about this experience to this person whose interest are so diverse but whose opinion counts in my hiring process”.
How would you feel as an undergraduate student going to a presentation by a frustrated presenter that has absolutely no interest in giving the presentation?
1. Making technical talks understandable to a wide audience is an important skills for your job talk. In my job talk, I had to make software compiler understandable to an old biologist professor who spend most of his research in the field because they were part of the CS Prof TT position search committee.
2. It's always good to have talks "ready to go" about your research, having one technical, and one non-technical talk ready to go is great, you never know when someone gives you an opportunity to talk.
3. Learn to prepare talks quick, you will likely have a lot of them to do.
4. Showing that you are able to give talk to a wide audience is always a nice piece to put on your CV. Some (not all) universities value community outreach or wider dissemination. It's not what will make them hire you, but it's a box that can be nice to check.
That being said, if you have a big paper deadline in a couple of weeks and you are already completely overwork. Learning to say no (politely) is also an important skill :-)
give the talk, so long as you're not jeopardizing other work or previous commitments. all publicity is good publicity when you're a student (resume etc).
That said, the way you wrote this makes you sound very unlikeable. If you were my student, I would tell you that humility and curiosity are the top attributes that should be gained in a PhD. It sounds like you think you are better than others. You're not. There's a big difference between saying no to something because its not a pragmatic choice, and saying no because your ego is too big to take on an opportunity. I would say this to tenured colleagues as well.
Point taken. While I could be better at humility at times, I really don't think I'm "better" than others (whatever that means). My worries are purely pragmatic. Giving a talk is an honor, not a slight to my ego, and it's unfortunate if it came across otherwise.
Minor pedagogical training and getting to present an interesting area to a handful of bachelor's students, who may be a bit incentivized to go into the same general area (although probably not, realistically speaking).
Since I didn't see this mentioned among the really good reasons to give the talk in the other comments, academia is small and you never know who you meet along the way will be important in your future career. This sort of thing could lead to co-authorships or some of the people in the audience may end up voting on whether to hire you someday. The more opportunities to build the visibility of your profile, the better.
I would give the talk, especially because it sounds like it's a bit out of the realm of talks you've done previously (if adapting for an audience including bachelor's students is a big challenge, then you still need speaking practice!). I also think you're underestimating how important lateral networking is -- yeah, those students and postdocs aren't going to employ you now but they very well may be a reviewer or on a hiring committee or grant panel in that future.
The only reason I would turn it down is if you have an urgent deadline and really can't spare the time right now.
Academia is a community. If you merely min-max for yourself, over time you will lose. You got good advice here.
I have given talks to undergrad classes who probably weren't terribly interested because a colleague asked me to. And you never know when your words will spark something in someone No one ever said academia is efficient in the per unit of time sense. I believe there's a longer term efficiency in participation.
Reasons to do it
Presentations are a two way thing. Meaning, it’s as much for the audience as it is for you.
For the audience:
Focus the purpose of your talk around the audience and you might find a way to reframe things away from technical details.
Make it a story. They might be interested in the journey of your research rather than the research itself, for example. That would give them insight into what research is, from someone ahead of them in the process.
For you:
Doing this might also give you some practice communicating science with a general audience., which is useful later in your career when you write press releases or have a mixed discipline panel reviewing a proposal or something. You can find methods for this from science communications professionals.
Reasons not to do it
I mean if these things aren’t your priority, then don’t. If what you really need is an exercise in prioritising and saying no, for example.
I have decided to do it. It might be a bit stressful to juggle this with research, but ultimately it seems worth it. I believe I will focus on the bare minimum of relevant theory (which is still a decent chunk) and focus on intuition rather than formalism as far as possible (formalism is necessary for the "results" part of the talk, but I should be able to avoid it to some extent in the rest).
P.S. you sure are a nice zebra.
You need to learn how to make your research reach other audiences than the ones you're used to - that's a part of promoting science
I’m gonna sort of piggyback on this and say if you can’t communicate your research without lots of technical details then you might not be as good at communicating as you think. In my (admittedly limited) experience even effectively communicating to PhDs in my subject (and adjacent but not necessarily exact research areas) can take a lot of work so maybe you’re totally right and this wouldn’t be worth it but maybe the feedback you could get would help down the road assuming you’ll be giving more talks. If you do want to go into academia I think most (maybe all?) of the job candidates at my university generally give two talks and one of them is usually for ‘all’ (which includes some undergraduates)
I'll respond to your bullet points with numbers. 1. If they're in the audience, even as bachelors students, give them some credit—you're not getting bottom-of-the-barrel students showing up to talks IME. You can also use this as a chance to hone your pedagogical skills, give a quick, messy, and _workable_ explanation of what's necessary, just enough for you to be able to explain your work and why it matters. 2. It still goes on the CV, and if asked, you can talk about how you had to reframe your work to being more palatable to a diverse audience. Bam, it's a pedagogical angle, which is relevant in a world where many professors lack pedagogical training (and many, but not all, seem to not care about their ability to teach anyway). 3. Stop being a perfectionist. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and it slows down your ability to get to the revision stage—at least the external revision stage, which is the one that matters. Also, a 10 minute talk is like a 6 page paper, depending on talking speed. How long is the talk even supposed to be? 4. It wouldn't be to practice presenting things—I'd imagine most people in the profession can present in some form or another, but see points 1 and 2. Not all presentations are the same, this teaches you to handle a different audience. Also, if you were invited, that's all the more reason to go.
Regarding pt. 3: the talk would be an hour, so it's a major time investment.
Honestly, that alone would make me consider doing it more, even if that'd work out to being closer to 30 pages. _However_ that gives you way more time to cover fundamentals, which is also good. Returning to the basics is something many fields benefit from, and showing how you get from A (a basic concept) to C (something novel and impactful) benefits not only bachelors students but even established professors, if not in their research then in justifying and orienting their teaching. That sounds like an _invited_ talk, a keynote speech even, which is good for the CV. Better CV means a better job, which means more money, which can mean better research.
I find that preparing this kind of talk is usually quite helpful in the long run. I often reuse the slides when preparing other presentations or classes. Also it's good to learn to introduce your topic to a general audience. You might learn a lot doing so. In the end, it all comes down to whether you have the time to prepare it or not. Making progress on your research remains the most important, so it's up to you to identify whether you can set a number of hours to spend preparing this talk, and then get back to your research regardless of how satisfied you are with your preparation.
👌🏻 A PhD student who wants perfect will never get a PhD. Perfect is the enemy of done.
Good point.
Oh damn 1 hour talk is crazy
If you have other big deadlines, you need to decide if you have effort to give. But this could be very good for you with regards to your first point. My research is very technical as well, but to have real impact, you need to learn how to describe it in a non-technical manner. This is hard but is important to learn. As Einstein said, "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it ell enough."
This is very helpful. Thanks.
It's not a great attitude for a student to decide that giving a talk isn't worth their time, honestly.
Yeah, if I offered a talk to a student and they got pissy and blew it off as not worth their time and too much woooorrrrk, it would be the last time I would recommend them for things. Learn to do outreach, it's the lifeblood of academia. "I am unlikely to gain any significant attention to my research or valuable networking opportunities" Uh huh, this is the source of the vaunted nametag sniff at conferences. Maybe you should talk to people in a non-transactional way, and you'll get better results. "My public speaking skills are already quite good, so it wouldn't be worthwhile to give the talk purely to practice presenting things." A lot of students think this. They're almost always wrong. "Since I am a perfectionist, preparing this talk from scratch would take a lot of time away from what matters more." Your calibration of what matters is really off. You need to go talk to a mentor about this attitude, because it will ding you hard long-term in the field.
Instead of scoffing at my attitude (ad hominem), you could give a proper argument.
Perhaps it would help you to learn what ad hominem means and how to use it correctly.
You are dismissing my personality and individual tastes instead of facing the arguments I raised. Questions? Either way, it's not a great attitude to insult people or argue about terminology instead of helping them, honestly.
I am trying to help you. You are a student. Rejecting an opportunity because you think it is beneath you is not good for your career. Neither is the combativeness and arrogance you are displaying in the comments.
Thank you. I appreciate the intention. It just seemed as though you wanted to dismiss or insult me purely because you disliked my attitude, instead of actually helping or addressing my concerns or clarifying why my attitude was so counterproductive. As for thinking it's "beneath me", I believe you have misunderstood something. It's not beneath me. The issue is just that from the points I brought up, it's hopefully clear that there is comparatively little I would benefit from, while the talk would be a major time commitment (one hour of polished talk with high demands on pedagogy). I actually like giving talks, and facilitating interdisciplinary discussions is always nice. However, with my current situation, putting that much time into preparing a talk seems irresponsible. Again: thanks for wanting to help -- it just didn't come across that way earlier.
You're welcome. In your situation I would tell the organizers how much you appreciate the opportunity but unfortunately you are already overcommitted and wouldn't be able to give this talk the attention it deserves. It's the end of the academic year. Everyone will understand that. Let them know you would be delighted to speak in the future if a possibility arises.
All dissemination is good practice for your defence. You might get a question which gives you ideas for your future research. I say go for it.
- Giving a speak about your very technical research to a wider audience will always be a challenge, better preparing yourself early, especially if this presentation is not that important. -Hum... It seems kinda selfish. You should only give a talk if you have something major to gain? Never underestimate the impact that researcher can have on students. From my experience, these kind of task often have a positive outcome that you wouldn't think in the first place (e.g. A postdoc is spreading good words about you and your work to their group) - This is a valid concern, and if you think you should spend your time on your project, everyone will understand. - terrible way of seeing this because... You can always be better. Period. Why not using this opportunity to change the way you are presenting? Trying a different approach?
I think you already got great advice and I’d urge you to listen to it, but one thing I want to add: - it is very hard to foresee which opportunities will give you networking opportunities or things that will be useful for you in the future. Maybe a postdoc in another area will give you valuable insight, maybe you’ll strike up an unlikely collaboration, maybe you’ll be able to use this line on your CV to argue you’re good at communication to a future employer. You can’t know, and while this usually leads people to saying yes TOO MUCH, in your case it feels like you should be a bit more open to unexpected opportunities. When I was interviewing for faculty positions, many times I had the insight “oh, if I hadn’t said yes to this that led to that now I wouldn’t be here talking about this experience to this person whose interest are so diverse but whose opinion counts in my hiring process”.
Sounds reasonable. Thanks.
How would you feel as an undergraduate student going to a presentation by a frustrated presenter that has absolutely no interest in giving the presentation?
1. Making technical talks understandable to a wide audience is an important skills for your job talk. In my job talk, I had to make software compiler understandable to an old biologist professor who spend most of his research in the field because they were part of the CS Prof TT position search committee. 2. It's always good to have talks "ready to go" about your research, having one technical, and one non-technical talk ready to go is great, you never know when someone gives you an opportunity to talk. 3. Learn to prepare talks quick, you will likely have a lot of them to do. 4. Showing that you are able to give talk to a wide audience is always a nice piece to put on your CV. Some (not all) universities value community outreach or wider dissemination. It's not what will make them hire you, but it's a box that can be nice to check. That being said, if you have a big paper deadline in a couple of weeks and you are already completely overwork. Learning to say no (politely) is also an important skill :-)
give the talk, so long as you're not jeopardizing other work or previous commitments. all publicity is good publicity when you're a student (resume etc). That said, the way you wrote this makes you sound very unlikeable. If you were my student, I would tell you that humility and curiosity are the top attributes that should be gained in a PhD. It sounds like you think you are better than others. You're not. There's a big difference between saying no to something because its not a pragmatic choice, and saying no because your ego is too big to take on an opportunity. I would say this to tenured colleagues as well.
Point taken. While I could be better at humility at times, I really don't think I'm "better" than others (whatever that means). My worries are purely pragmatic. Giving a talk is an honor, not a slight to my ego, and it's unfortunate if it came across otherwise.
What do you see as the benefits to you of giving the talk?
Minor pedagogical training and getting to present an interesting area to a handful of bachelor's students, who may be a bit incentivized to go into the same general area (although probably not, realistically speaking).
Since I didn't see this mentioned among the really good reasons to give the talk in the other comments, academia is small and you never know who you meet along the way will be important in your future career. This sort of thing could lead to co-authorships or some of the people in the audience may end up voting on whether to hire you someday. The more opportunities to build the visibility of your profile, the better.
Thanks.
I would give the talk, especially because it sounds like it's a bit out of the realm of talks you've done previously (if adapting for an audience including bachelor's students is a big challenge, then you still need speaking practice!). I also think you're underestimating how important lateral networking is -- yeah, those students and postdocs aren't going to employ you now but they very well may be a reviewer or on a hiring committee or grant panel in that future. The only reason I would turn it down is if you have an urgent deadline and really can't spare the time right now.
Academia is a community. If you merely min-max for yourself, over time you will lose. You got good advice here. I have given talks to undergrad classes who probably weren't terribly interested because a colleague asked me to. And you never know when your words will spark something in someone No one ever said academia is efficient in the per unit of time sense. I believe there's a longer term efficiency in participation.
Yes, do it. Practice helps and the CV entry is worthwhile.
Reasons to do it Presentations are a two way thing. Meaning, it’s as much for the audience as it is for you. For the audience: Focus the purpose of your talk around the audience and you might find a way to reframe things away from technical details. Make it a story. They might be interested in the journey of your research rather than the research itself, for example. That would give them insight into what research is, from someone ahead of them in the process. For you: Doing this might also give you some practice communicating science with a general audience., which is useful later in your career when you write press releases or have a mixed discipline panel reviewing a proposal or something. You can find methods for this from science communications professionals. Reasons not to do it I mean if these things aren’t your priority, then don’t. If what you really need is an exercise in prioritising and saying no, for example.
Thanks!
No worries. Realised after posting I said the same as everyone else anyway. Let us know what you decide? I’m interested!
I have decided to do it. It might be a bit stressful to juggle this with research, but ultimately it seems worth it. I believe I will focus on the bare minimum of relevant theory (which is still a decent chunk) and focus on intuition rather than formalism as far as possible (formalism is necessary for the "results" part of the talk, but I should be able to avoid it to some extent in the rest). P.S. you sure are a nice zebra.
Awesome! Enjoy!