4/9/2022
At UW - Eau Claire, two days in April are dedicated to presenting and viewing undergraduate research done at this school. I got the opportunity to present my poster along with my research partner, and this is the first time I had ever done a presentation on my work. I'll share my reflections and highlights of the process that led up to CERCA.
Poster Creation
When collaborating with my research partner and mentor, we outlined multiple goals to hit before the poster was due. One of these goals was making sure our background info could be consolidated and understood by a general audience. I re-wrote this information and then took the extra time to share it with someone unfamiliar with my project, making edits based on their feedback. We also went through the statistical processes with my faculty mentor so she could teach us the best ways to analyze and present the information in a clear fashion. A difficult part of creating the poster was deciding what and what not to include in our methods section. There were a many complicated explanations of the analyses we did, so we had to pick and choose what was most relevant as it all didn't fit on the poster. Finally, once proofed multiple times, we sent it off to the printing services at UWEC and picked it up the day of the presentation session.
Preparing for Presenting
Everything we had been doing for the past year really came into light when thinking about the information we were about to share with others and being one of many in the sea of posters in the ballroom on campus. It was a daunting task to me as this would be the first ever research presentation I had done. Something I struggled with was figuring out what to say in order to relay all the information we found but still keep the attention of the person I was speaking to. To prepare for this I practiced presenting with to sister over FaceTime, talked through key points to mention with my mentor, and asked for advice from people I know had presented something like this before.
Presenting
When I finally got into the large room we were presenting in, it felt quite chaotic. There were so many amazing people I had talked to and great posters I saw the day before, and I was excited to be one of them. My research partner and I went through our "elevator pitch" one last time before students, faculty, and community members started shuffling in. During the first few times I spoke with people who were interested in our topic, it was very nerve wracking. Although once I had figured out the main things to say and the best ways to say them, it became a much smoother process.
From the experience of presenting my research at CERCA, I learned how to create a poster with the intention of displaying it to an audience, how to shorten and consolidate vast amounts of information, how to make this same information understandable to people outside my discipline, and finally how to speak about the work I have done. It was a super cool experience and I would love to do it again.
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