Life of a Lab Rat

(No, I'm not dead)

We've had our cohort of Honours students give their "nearly finished lab work" progress reports this week. This took the form of ten minute presentations to their peers and the assessment panel in a fairly informal atmosphere. We did not formally assess the students at this stage but offered what I hope were helpful suggestions and probed how well they have been doing.

Despite a bit of low-to-medium grilling they came acquitted themselves admirably. Most of the students have not only done a lot of work but have also achieved something, which is quite remarkable in the relatively short time they've had. I have been meaning to write about my own very young apprentice and how he now runs a cloning masterclass; it looks like he'll be taking over the lab's NMR work too, so successful have been his experiments.

Ten students gave talks, and on the whole I was impressed with the clarity and organization of the presentations. There were a few crowded and unclear slides, but these were notable for being so rare. I am particularly gratified to be able to report not a single instance of Comic Sans.

Naturally, there were one or two blunders, and for those who enjoyed my previous rant on seminar-giving, here's some more advice (in no particular order, just as they occurred to me during the talks):

It is essential to give a good impression, and equally to end on a high note. "Er, that's all I have" is not how to end a talk, and neither should you begin by saying "The title of my project is. . ." when the title of your project is already on the screen for us all to read. FSP wrote about this a month ago: unfortunately I only read her very useful advice fifteen minutes before kick-off this morning and was unable to pass the link around the troops in time. Think seriously about how you're going to introduce your talk, and indeed your introduction. I have to say that the introductions given in the last two days were very good; contextualizing a project and leaving enough time talk about your work when you only have ten minutes is harder than it sounds.

Introductions do not have to be formally written in complete sentences. Bullet points are fine; the shorter and punchier the better. Right-justification of text on slides looks daft, especially when you have         long words      and    big      gaps.

When you show gel-based data, do not splice together lanes from different gels (especially if on one section you have markers and nothing else!). This used to be accepted but journals are becoming increasingly agitated about this — with good reason — and it's a bad habit to get into.

Reading from slides — I've talked about this before, but similarly, you should not read from notes or talk to the screen. It was only ten minutes, and I would have expected every student to have been able to present without notes.

Use the active voice. Do not say "This protein was purified by affinity chromatography . . .", but rather "I purified this protein . . .". You did it; be proud of that. Similarly, "NMR was used to solve the structure . . ." is a little bit insulting to the guy in the lab (and who might be in the audience) who did it. "Dr Chou solved this structure by NMR . . ." is much better. People have names — use them. And for goodness' sake spell them correctly in your acknowledgments.

Learn the multiples of words like 'spectrum' and 'criterion'. Saying 'spectras' is just silly.

Summarize well; reiterate what you've actually done. And make sure your file is on the internal disk of the computer from which you are going to give the presentation, and that it displays correctly, before you start.

All that aside, a 'very well done' to our Honours students. I look forward to reading your theses.