Good morning! Today's my last day before wedding chaos arrives (in the form of relatives), so there will be lots of cleaning and vacuuming, and then some more vacuuming so that no one chokes to death on cat hair. Consequently, I will not be blogging for roughly the next week. I promise to post appropriately altered pictures after the wedding.
Gerty-Z, over at Balanced Instability had an interesting post yesterday about the lack of confidence demonstrated by most young female speakers. As I mentioned in the comments, Alan Alda was involved in a very interesting project a few years ago about using improv training as a tool to improve their communication skills. The video can be seen here.
Students of all stripes generally need more experience presenting. While rehearsing a specific talk can help, many, many science students are simply uncomfortable speaking in front of an audience. There's also a line I love at about 8:25: "It's much easier when you just make it up than when you write it out the night before." So many students over rehearse a particular talk, and if they get interrupted or distracted mid-sentence, completely lose their talk.
However, there simply aren't that many opportunities to practice, unless you are somehow lecturing, or have external routes (like theatre or other performing arts). It's hard to sound confident about your science when you wouldn't be comfortable presenting The Cat in the Hat in front of a group. Perhaps instead of a journal club, a Science Open Mic? I'd love suggestions, as this is something I'm really interested in starting here at GiantU.
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Well-Rounded Engineers (or why Humanities Matter)
While SnowTech was an engineering school to the core, my high school education was very much like attending a liberal arts college. I was enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program, which means that, among other things, I can spell baccalaureate correctly on the first try. It also means that I got a much broader education than the typical American high school student.
As a graduate student, it is pretty much inevitable that you will work with people from other countries, and absolutely inevitable that you will work with people from very different cultural backgrounds than yours. Sure, you'll have common scientific backgrounds, but there's more to an effective working relationship. This is where I think it's important to have that broader background to draw on.
My high school experience involved a very extensive study of modern (i.e., 1760-ish onward) European History, as well as a brief study of Asian and Latin American History. Learning history gives me perspective on more cultural background. More importantly, though, history class is where I really learned how to write a coherent argument. We wrote essay. Lots of essay. Some of them at home, some of them where we were given specific resources to analyze, and others where we had to recall the supporting information without help. We were taught how to structure an argument, and how to support a thesis statement effectively. Over and over, I read about how scientists can't write or communicate. Perhaps it's because they were never really taught how?
I also had to learn a second language (I chose Spanish). More than anything, I think this is something everyone should have to try, just so they can appreciate how difficult it really is. Yes, your Chinese TA may have a thick accent and trouble with articles like "the", but your Chinese would probably be even more unintelligible. Trying to speak a second language helps you learn how to effectively manipulate a restricted vocabulary. Depending on who I'm talking to, I tend to adjust my speech patterns (particularly my enunciation), because I'm aware that my standard mode of speech can be excessively florid, slightly mumbled, and non-linear. Learning Spanish made me a more effective communicator, even though I'm still speaking in English.
Speaking of English, my freshman year focused on learning how to extract meaning from text efficiently. We were assigned 26 books over the course of the year, and while my freakish speed-reading self completely read all but one of them (I just can't get into Dickens), we were taught strategies on how to look for meaning without poring over every single word. I also learned how to edit myself brutally. We were given red pens and our own papers, and she expected them to be bleeding when we turned them back in.
I've already talked about how music lead me to materials science, and it should be obvious that chemistry and physics and math were very important to that as well. However, I think the most important skills I learned in high school weren't the facts or formulas I memorized, but the communication skills I learned outside of STEM classes.
As a graduate student, it is pretty much inevitable that you will work with people from other countries, and absolutely inevitable that you will work with people from very different cultural backgrounds than yours. Sure, you'll have common scientific backgrounds, but there's more to an effective working relationship. This is where I think it's important to have that broader background to draw on.
My high school experience involved a very extensive study of modern (i.e., 1760-ish onward) European History, as well as a brief study of Asian and Latin American History. Learning history gives me perspective on more cultural background. More importantly, though, history class is where I really learned how to write a coherent argument. We wrote essay. Lots of essay. Some of them at home, some of them where we were given specific resources to analyze, and others where we had to recall the supporting information without help. We were taught how to structure an argument, and how to support a thesis statement effectively. Over and over, I read about how scientists can't write or communicate. Perhaps it's because they were never really taught how?
I also had to learn a second language (I chose Spanish). More than anything, I think this is something everyone should have to try, just so they can appreciate how difficult it really is. Yes, your Chinese TA may have a thick accent and trouble with articles like "the", but your Chinese would probably be even more unintelligible. Trying to speak a second language helps you learn how to effectively manipulate a restricted vocabulary. Depending on who I'm talking to, I tend to adjust my speech patterns (particularly my enunciation), because I'm aware that my standard mode of speech can be excessively florid, slightly mumbled, and non-linear. Learning Spanish made me a more effective communicator, even though I'm still speaking in English.
Speaking of English, my freshman year focused on learning how to extract meaning from text efficiently. We were assigned 26 books over the course of the year, and while my freakish speed-reading self completely read all but one of them (I just can't get into Dickens), we were taught strategies on how to look for meaning without poring over every single word. I also learned how to edit myself brutally. We were given red pens and our own papers, and she expected them to be bleeding when we turned them back in.
I've already talked about how music lead me to materials science, and it should be obvious that chemistry and physics and math were very important to that as well. However, I think the most important skills I learned in high school weren't the facts or formulas I memorized, but the communication skills I learned outside of STEM classes.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
An Advisor to English Dictionary
Part of any working relationship is learning what certain phrases actually mean beyond the direct statement. Below are some of the phrase my advisor uses and their translations.
"We need to meet sooner rather than later": I'm about to double your work load for the next 2 to 6 weeks. You may or may not actually get credit for this.
"I need to think about it": You're going to have to keep nagging me about "it" because it's low on my priority list.
"Soon": yesterday
"Coming up": usually two weeks or less, in reference to "I have a meeting coming up and I need you to do (these things that take longer than two weeks).
"I'm not sure": for a single item, typically means no. If trying to get a sense of priority between two items, it means do both.
"Here is the final version": if you wait another hour, I'll have completely changed my mind about something.
"I'll do it this weekend": I may do it in the next month with sufficient nagging.
DISCLAIMER: every advisor is different. Some translations may not hold for all advisors.
What phrases does your advisor use that can't be taken at face value?
"We need to meet sooner rather than later": I'm about to double your work load for the next 2 to 6 weeks. You may or may not actually get credit for this.
"I need to think about it": You're going to have to keep nagging me about "it" because it's low on my priority list.
"Soon": yesterday
"Coming up": usually two weeks or less, in reference to "I have a meeting coming up and I need you to do (these things that take longer than two weeks).
"I'm not sure": for a single item, typically means no. If trying to get a sense of priority between two items, it means do both.
"Here is the final version": if you wait another hour, I'll have completely changed my mind about something.
"I'll do it this weekend": I may do it in the next month with sufficient nagging.
DISCLAIMER: every advisor is different. Some translations may not hold for all advisors.
What phrases does your advisor use that can't be taken at face value?
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Cross-Functional by Design
Over at Engineer Blogs, the weekly topic is interacting with engineers across disciplines. As GEARS correctly notes, MSE is already pretty interdisciplinary, interacting with ME, ChemE, and physics. However, it doesn't stop there. If you're working in energy materials, you'll spend plenty of time talking to the EEs, and structural materials talk to the civil engineers.
Because there are so many subspecialties, some of the same challenges one runs into talking to other engineering disciplines can come up within a materials science department. There's occasional jargon barriers, and regular confusion over variable assignments (sigma: conductivity or stress?) However, most of us have some sort of common background, as well as a specific cross-discipline background. This means in a group of mixed engineers, I frequently become "translator". This almost invariable involves a lot of strange hand gestures, but I've been told those are my specialty.
My daily life involves a cross-disciplinary relationship, since I'm marrying Mr.ME in a month. I can understand 80-90% of his daily jargon (the rest being company-specific acronyms), but there is a very large portion of my typical work that requires significant translation, not only from materials to mechanical, but from computational to experimental. Given how difficult in can be to explain concepts to other engineers, is it surprising that non-engineers find us almost impossible to follow?
My sister is an architect, making her the only non-engineer in the immediate family. Her strategy is to tell us to explain it in 30 seconds with bunnies. This works surprisingly well, though the results are sometimes unintentionally hilarious. Because, well, bunnies!
Because there are so many subspecialties, some of the same challenges one runs into talking to other engineering disciplines can come up within a materials science department. There's occasional jargon barriers, and regular confusion over variable assignments (sigma: conductivity or stress?) However, most of us have some sort of common background, as well as a specific cross-discipline background. This means in a group of mixed engineers, I frequently become "translator". This almost invariable involves a lot of strange hand gestures, but I've been told those are my specialty.
My daily life involves a cross-disciplinary relationship, since I'm marrying Mr.ME in a month. I can understand 80-90% of his daily jargon (the rest being company-specific acronyms), but there is a very large portion of my typical work that requires significant translation, not only from materials to mechanical, but from computational to experimental. Given how difficult in can be to explain concepts to other engineers, is it surprising that non-engineers find us almost impossible to follow?
My sister is an architect, making her the only non-engineer in the immediate family. Her strategy is to tell us to explain it in 30 seconds with bunnies. This works surprisingly well, though the results are sometimes unintentionally hilarious. Because, well, bunnies!
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