When I was working on my PhD (over six years ago now), I was so focused on my own research that I never really saw any value in attending seminars or guest talks from invited speakers. Unless their research was directly relevant to my own work I just didn’t see how it would benefit me. With hindsight, this was a pretty daft viewpoint.
At the time I was so wrapped up in my research that I’d totally failed to see all the other benefits that the PhD experience provides, benefits that would be much more useful to my future career development.
While part of the PhD experience is certainly about carrying out novel research, a much bigger part of this experience is all the skills that you learn along the way. I’m not necessarily talking about the skills required to collect high quality microscope images or to use data processing software, what I found far more valuable were the transferrable skills. These skills are things like the ability to apply critical thinking to some results, the best way to talk about my work so that other people could understand it, and how to tackle a problem from different angles to find a good solution. Yes, I developed some of these skills by immersing myself in my own research but I think I’d have picked them up far more quickly if I’d made the effort to actively listen to other people talk about their work, and really tried to understand it. I think this would also have helped with the inevitable job-hunt that ensues once you’ve finished a PhD.
It’s fair to say that I now make much more effort to engage with these research seminars and, rather than just letting the words wash over me like they would have all those years ago, I now find it easier to stay attentive and can usually think of a question or two to ask at the end. This hasn’t exactly come easy but I’ve discovered a few tricks that have helped.
The easiest trick is simply to write down what the person is saying. Much like I did when I was an undergraduate who sat in a lot of lectures, I find that picking out the key points, or those that seem important really help me to stay focused. To continue the undergraduate lecture analogy, it also helps to imagine that someone might ask you to summarize the talk afterwards, a bit like the exam you’d sit at the end of the semester.
Another good idea is to make use of social media, although of course I don’t mean during the talk itself. I find LinkedIn and Twitter really useful for finding out about wider research and, since social media usually encompasses a broad audience, its often pitched in a way that you don’t need to work in that exact field to understand it. Just twenty minutes of daily browsing has really improved my general science knowledge which in turn has helped me understand the more specific information provided in someone’s talk. I guess you could say that it makes the talk more meaningful to me.
My final piece of advice is; if you’re really struggling to pay attention then you could assess the style and delivery of the talk, rather than the actual scientific content. Ask yourself whether the talk is logically structured, are the slides too cluttered, can you easily match up what the person is saying with the content of visual aid. It’s also worth asking yourself if there are any aspects of the presentation that you like and could apply to your own talks, or conversely, if there something about the talk is really off-putting then know to avoid doing something similar for your own work. When I do this I often find that I’ve actually taken in quite a lot, and could probably explain to someone what I found interesting about that person’s work.
The skills that I’ve now developed from critically listening to someone else’s work have certainly helped me with my own research. More broadly, these critical thinking skills would be just as useful should I choose in the future to change my career path and move away from research. It seems to me that, although you’ll develop as an independent researcher during your PhD, the transferable skills you acquire will be even more valuable.
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