Presenting at American Physical Society April Meeting!

Hello once again, Steemit! I'm sure that many of my fellow academics can agree that giving scientific presentations conjures up a mixed bag of emotions, including anxiety, excitement, and even pride about one's findings.

As an undergraduate, I had a lot of great opportunities to give presentations on my research. Some of the presentations were at my home university, and some of the presentations were at national conferences, such as the American Physical Society, American Meteorological Society, and American Geophysical Union annual conferences. It's quite a surreal experience, being surrounded by literally thousands of researchers from all over, nearly all of whom are there to also present on their own scientific findings. It makes the work of one person seem so small, and yet emphasizes how extraordinary the scientific enterprise is as a whole.

Some of the presentations that I've given were oral presentations: short, 10 minute talks summarizing the result of a project. These are where the real anxiety can show up: talking in front of people, many of whom are experts in your field, about the project that you've been working on. It can be quite intimidating! Nonetheless, there is also a good bit of excitement present as well, because you hope that those who are listening find your work interesting or maybe even useful for their own research.

It seems to be that oral presentations are looked upon with higher regard (at least in my field, physics) than the other type of presentation common at conferences: posters. I've never quite understood this, because poster sessions seem to provide a better environment for the productive exchange of ideas. Poster presentations are usually done in extremely large rooms with long aisles of posters one after the next. The presenting author of the work is typically assigned a time block during which they are required to stand by their poster. This provides the opportunity for interested people to come by and talk with the presenter and learn about their work. It also provides good face-to-face time between those who are working on similar topics and yields a great opportunity for networking. I've only done one poster presentation, but it was really neat to get to talk about my work one-on-one with people who found it interesting enough to stop by and listen.

I'll likely be giving an oral presentation at this year's American Physical Society April Meeting. If any fellow Steemit members are also physicists that will be presenting at this meeting, I'd love to hear from you and find out about your research! Check out my abstract below: