,
4 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
A student in the audience told another student who told me what he said, "my experiments never work out like that. I don't feel like I belong in science" after hearing my talk. This was shocking and devastating to me and really made me think. (1/4)
When I give talks, I often try to tell a logical story, which means I don't discuss all the failed experiments and disproven hypotheses before reaching the ultimate finding. It's organized in such a rational way that has nothing to do with how we got there. (2/4)
However, I realize now that this may be inadvertently misleading and hurting students who get the impression that everything worked out the way I present it. That we somehow knew exactly what to do and how to do them. Nothing could be further from the truth. (3/4)
Based on this feedback, I am going to change the way I give talks. I will incorporate examples of failures, struggles, wrong turns we took (of which there are plenty), and how we overcame those to find the answer. I am so grateful for the feedback. #AcademicChatter (4/4)
