Departmental Talk

This morning I survived my once-yearly research talk to the faculty (and students) of our department. Most people really stress over the talk, practice for weeks and weeks – I throw my slides together at the last minute and just kind of wing it. I'm at quite the advantage because I have no problems whatsoever with public speaking, unlike the average scientist. It wasn’t quite as much of a smashing success as last year (seriously, last year basically EVERY PI who was there came up and raved to me about what a great job I did, how it was the best 2^nd year talk they had ever seen, etc.) – this year I just got a couple of “Great presentation, Julie!” comments at the end, but then again I think I set the bar so high last year that everyone just kind of expected it. My favorite part were the gasps in shock when people saw the sheer number of purification attempts I have tried for the pain-in-the-ass protein I’ve been trying to purify for 2+ years (and this is after a post-doc worked on the purification for about a year) – if it’s out there, I’ve tried it.

I can never figure out what my PI expects out of me, though. Last year, despite all the rave reviews, he told me that my talk was too animated – I’m giving a scientific talk, not delivering a political speech. This year I reeled it in to science-mode, and his first comment was that the speech was too monotone and why don’t I think about putting a little life into it? And he said that rather than just state that one of the post-docs did one of the experiments, I should have actually put her name on the screen for doing it -- which is a valid point and fine, except that when she did her talk and used some of my data, there was no mention of my name anywhere (not that I cared at all, but shouldn't this naming who did the experiment things worth both ways then?). I also found it a tad frustrating that I did a quick run-through of my talk at lab meeting on Tuesday and he waits until after the real talk to point out the changes to make to certain slides – why even bother with the run-through anyway? Isn’t that the point? To say on Tuesday that I might want to change this to that, you know, BEFORE the actual talk, rather than after the talk is over? And, once again, like every other year, he interrupted me, mid-talk, to ASK ME QUESTIONS. It would be one thing if this was the norm, but around here advisors come to talks and defend their students to the death – PIs tend to be very protective of their graduate students. If someone raises a question about the work, the PI justifies the work, answers questions that the student can’t answer, etc. I mean, if there is a real problem with the student’s work, then so be it, but if it’s just a tough question that the student doesn’t know the answer to, rather than let him/her flounder up there, the PI will swoop down and provide an answer when it is obvious that the student is unable to do so. Rather than answering the questions, my PI is the one ­asking the questions to which I do not know the answer and he knows that I do not know the answer because it is collaborative data and what is on the screen in my talk is quite literally the only information which has been shared with me. I have no problem with questioning my knowledge, but isn’t that why we present our data at our own laboratory meetings? Wouldn’t that be a better forum for questions than in front of the entire department? I’m not sure what he stands to gain by making me look incompetent while all the other PIs attempt to make their own graduate students look brilliant.

At the end, he did comment that I would have one more talk to do for this before defending my thesis… which would imply that I would graduate within the next year and a half(!!!!). I’m not going to hold my breath, though – there were rumors that the 6^th year Ph.D. student in my lab would be graduating as early as a full year ago, but he only did his thesis defense last month and still has several more experiments to complete. It is, however, nice to think that there is a light at the end of this tunnel that might be an end, rather than just a train of failed experiments coming to run me over.