Just like crashing a bicycle

I gave a talk at the Community Modeling and Analysis System (CMAS) Conference last week, conveniently located (once I found the place) at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill. This may be an oversimplification, but as I understand it CMAS is an organization that acts as a liaison between EPA and the outside "community" that uses various air quality models, principally the Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ, pronounced "SEE-mack") model. I am a postdoc with the Atmospheric Sciences Modeling Division, a joint division of EPA and NOAA that, among other things, develops CMAQ.

I wasn't so bothered by oral reports in high school and felt that I did a good job at them, but I have never been comfortable--or particularly good at--giving formal scientific presentations. Probably my discomfort stems both from holding myself to a higher quality standard for something central to my career as opposed to a minor part of a high school grade, and general feelings of inadequacy in meeting that standard.

Also, I simply haven't given very many. Our air pollution group (three professors and their students) was so large at Caltech that each student gave group meeting seminars very rarely. Also, the meetings became overly formal, where people were reluctant to present works in progress out of a sense that they weren't good enough (it didn't help that the faculty would sometimes use us as surrogates to carry on their own disagreements with each other). I think I only gave one group meeting during my entire time at Caltech, though part of that was because my advisor was away a lot and actually moved to Atlanta my last couple years.

The only other talks I recall giving were my candidacy exam, one conference presentation, and my thesis defense. None of those were truly disastrous, but I didn't feel particularly good about any of them, either--the conference presentation was especially weak. When I admitted a bit of nervousness to one of my fellow postdocs about my upcoming presentation, she thought it was simply because I hadn't given one in a while. She said not to worry, she responded with the platitude that it was just like riding a bicycle and would all come back to me. I decided not to correct her mistaken impression that I ever knew how to ride.

I gave my talk, (end of Session 6) and it went about like expected: so-so, at least in my mind. I didn't say anything appallingly embarrassing, but wound up finishing several minutes early and forgot to say a few things. Note to self: it's a bad idea to be finishing up your slides the day of your presentation.

The next day I submitted another abstract, this time for a conference in February. I don't really understand why they need to be submitted four months in advance, but AAAR always seems to be that way so I guess I should stop whining about it. The problem is, one has little idea of what results one will have when the abstract needs to be written. Prakash likened it to throwing a ball over a fence and hoping you can climb the fence to get the ball. So, that's what we did. We'll find out soon whether the abstract has been accepted, thus whether we really need to climb the fence by then.