This has been a week or so of two halves: lots of presentation and lots of public engagement.
Starting with the presentation (see previous post for recap of the drama)…I have spent many many hours tweaking, practicing, more tweaking my presentation for next week’s viva. I spend 2 hours with a friend who also had their viva coming up: we each did a practice run through and gave feedback to each other. I think it helped us both in terms of confidence, practice for the real thing but also spend some time together having a bit of a laugh. For me, at least, it allowed me to relax a little and just go with the flow a bit.
I had a run through with my supervisor yesterday, which I was super worried about before, I relaxed after the practice session and I’m now more…not relaxed….but I guess less stressed and worried about my presentation. My supervisor said it was great, made a couple of comments but said it’s good and just keep practicing and deliver with confidence. I don’t want to get complacent, I still need to practice and perfect the thing…but I’m not worried that it’s all totally wrong anymore. That confidence thing, I definitely need to work on.
On the other side of the coin, the public engagement stuff, which has been keeping me going through the assessment stress, partly because of my partner in crime. We have now officially launched the podcast (with our first two episodes) we have been working on for the department. We’ve called in “Fragments” and we’re going to be talking about all things blast injury…the research that’s happening in the centre, current events and affairs and looking over our history to learn lessons from the past. They’re all super conversational, hopefully they don’t feel like we’re lecturing people…that is NOT the aim! We just want to share with the world, the things we’re really passionate about. I like to think that’s how we come across, especially after our latest recording session which was our first one with someone other than the two of us!
We’ve also got our plans together and volunteers for our next event, where we have a stand at the next Science Museum Late, which is themed “Engineering”. After so much planning it’s amazing to see the fruits of our labour. Fingers crossed that we keep going with this level of momentum.
Later today we have a Twitter conference with War Through Other Stuff – I’d never hear of a conference being held on Twitter before this but it’s great to be a part of it. The whole event is about what we have learned from war that has impacted our daily lives. We’ll be looking at amputations and rehab from WW1 compared to now. I’m pretty excited, even if a little nervous…I just don’t really know what to expect!
It’s all exciting, but this past week has really emphasised that balance is key. A lull in PhD life isn’t necessarily bad, but you just have to keep that momentum going and no one else is going to do that for you. I’m finding that it’s difficult to focus on much with my assessment looming over my head, so it’s nice to have a break from intensely working on my project. I’m sure things will pick up again on that side of things next week.