It had been a week since I had submitted my first year PhD report and it was time for me to present and defend the work in front of my peers and colleagues, writes PhD student Vaibhav Sharma.
I was asked to give a 20 minute presentation at University College London to the biochemical engineering department, with my topic being “The Need for Tissue Engineered Products and their Characteristics”.
After few sleepless nights, I reached the auditorium 15 minutes before the start time. I shouldn’t have, but I was glad to see the auditorium empty and was hoping that the talk was cancelled.
But the smile on my face didn’t last long enough, as I soon saw my colleagues and two supervisors walk into the room.
In a few seconds there were almost 12-15 students along with a couple of post-docs and supervisors.
I loaded my PowerPoint presentation and started my talk with nervousness in my voice (my 1st PhD talk), trying to look as confident as I could.
Once the talk was over, I looked at the audience and was positive that they were all were ready to start firing rounds of questions at to prove me wrong. To my surprise, instead of proving me wrong, they all seemed to have understood what I said and wanted to do is learn as much as they could.
Everyone in the room asked me questions and seemed satisfied with my answers. At the end of the talk all came up to me and congratulated me for a good talk.
It seemed like a dream, but it wasn’t. I was glad my talk was over and more than that I was able to convey my work to a group of well-read scientists who all seemed to agree with my theories. This, I’ll admit, was very relieving.
