Research presentation in front of reknown researchers...feeling intimidated.

[Adelaide9216]

Hello!

My supervisor has a research chair and I've been involved in the work that she's been doing since April. Tomorrow, I am presenting (3 minutes and informally) to her co-researchers and the whole research team and I am a little intimidated. I've never met these people before. I've done talks and speeches before in the past (my biggest audience was 4000 youth) but the prestige that these people have intimidates me. I am also scared to present in front of my own supervisor, I want to make a good impression in front of her. I know I'll survive through it, my research coordinator will also be there in case they ask questions that I do not know the answer to, but this is the first time I am doing this and I am sightly nervous even if it's just a 3 minutes presentation.

 

[Hope.for.the.best]

I can totally relate as I have gone through the same thing. My school requires students to do a departmental talk every year, but I have to talk for at least 10 min. To me, the most difficult part is the Q&A session. Like you, I always worry about getting questions that I don't know how to answer and then my supervisors get disappointed. Unfortunately, there must be times when someone raise a question that you don't know how to respond. The key is not to panic. Very often, saying something like "This is a very good question/suggestion. I have never thought about that. Perhaps I should look into that later." will get you out of the way. I tried that a few times and it worked very well!

Good luck to your talk! 

[Adelaide9216]

It went well.