Presenting nerves

Recently, I had the privilege (I guess?!) of presenting some of my research to a panel of academics at the Australian National University’s symposium on Australian life post COVID-19.

I was presenting a paper about the ways in which the ideological (or political) landscape might change (or remain the same) as we emerge from the pandemic. I was required to sent through a ten minute video of my presentation about two weeks prior to a panel event, which was held via zoom in which myself and other presenters discussed our presentations.

When I submitted for the symposium, I was under the impression it would be a mixture of PhD students like myself presenting, along with some more seasoned and accomplished academics. Upon being informed I had been chosen to present, I noticed that I was literally the only non-academic in my session.

I was pretty much completely panicked upon realising this. So many doubts were running through my mind: do I actually know what I’m talking about? If I don’t, these people will definitely realise. They know everything. They’re so intimidating.

During this bout of sever imposter syndrome, I tried to tell myself all the things that good supervisors tell PhD students. Things like: you are now an expert in your particular field – i.e. next to no one else is studying that specific thing as intently as you at this moment, so you are in a great position to find cutting-edge research that might even challenge conventional wisdoms. The other thing that came to mind came from one of my work colleagues: ‘the main difference between experienced or successful people and newcomers is confidence.’ This makes sense to me – I often see experienced professionals opining about something that I know to be incorrect or at least more debatable than they are presenting. The key, I think, is to sound authoritative, and people will tend to take you seriously (I acknowledge here my advantages as a white dude in this regard).

That was the attitude I tried to take into the panel discussion, but ultimately I was just so nervous. I think I did OK, but whenever I get nervous, I almost always have a bout of involuntary flushing in my cheeks, making my discomfort obvious to everyone. This certainly doesn’t help with projecting authority and confidence, but I guess there’s not much I can do about that other then keep gaining experience!