Explaining your PhD to an amateur

JANICE YIU PONDERS THE COMPLEXITY OF ‘BRIEFLY’ EXPLAINING YOUR PHD TO YOUR FRIENDS

As technology steadily creeps into all aspects of our lives, we are becoming more accustomed to having access to all kinds of information, accessible in seconds, at our fingertips. As a result we are becoming less and less patient, as our environment becomes more and more complex.

All PhD students (or anyone doing further studies) find themselves in a similar situation at some point: you catch up with an old flat-mate and they politely ask you how your project is going. You eagerly tell them that you finally got some results from your high throughput genome screening experiments and about your difficult 70-hours weeks. You then realise that attempting to elaborate will prove a near impossible task, given that your friend, as the majority of people, will have no idea what you’re talking about. My frustration with situations like these stems from occasions when I have felt I was trivialising the scientific truths and therefore perhaps even misleading my listeners.

So, is it really possible to convey the significance of a PhD research thesis (an average of 80,000 words) in just three minutes to a non-specialist audience? On top of this, can you do it whilst fitting in audience interaction and preferably, witty humour with reasons why people should care about your work?

This is exactly what you have to do for the ‘3MT-3 Minute Thesis’ Competition.

First started in the University of Queensland in 2008 by PhD students to allow them to showcase their academic, presentation and research communication skills, 3MT has been slowly gaining popularity in institutions worldwide. On many levels, 3MT is different from TED. How engaged your audience is depends largely on how easy your storytelling is to relate to, especially as visuals are limited to one Power Point slide only. Earlier this year, UCL saw a great number of enthusiastic 3MT speakers with topics ranging from architecture to the intricate mechanisms of cell divisions.

After watching numerous 3Minute Theses, I have gradually begun to understand one of the secret formulas to effective storytelling. Firstly and most noticeably, take it slow. In fact, the largest similarity among the 3MT winners is that they all talked in an absolutely normal speed with pauses and spontaneity despite the short time span. For example, UCSF’s 3MT winner Sama Ahmed, whose 3MT presentation talked in a captivating and concise way that made people forget their awes about unfamiliar disciplines. His research involved identifying the specific genes in fruit flies that distinguish them from other fly species. Who knows, one day Sama may even find the human genes that allow you to instinctively know what your ‘cup of species’ is.

No doubt pursuing a PhD degree is mind stretching but 3MT reveals another side of things, it alters our perspective on PhD students, changing our preconception of them as near geniuses of untouchable intelligence, to approachable people that are simply enthralled by their subject. They are thinkers of tomorrow, ‘engineers’ enthused about untangling problems that have tremendous potential power to benefit the public. This is the exact impression I was given by Zaid Janjua, from the University of Nottingham and winner of Vitae’s 3MT in Britain this year. His topic was about designing anti-ice motor devices for aircrafts that would make flying even safer. His judicious use of analogy, using the example of the different types of ice we see in our home fridges to explain what ‘bad’ or ‘good’ ice is for aeroplane engines when flying high up in the sky made his talk and invention unforgettable.

As Einstein once said, ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’ So now you know that before you give a long, technical, expert speech, as you may one day if you pursue a PhD, you know that ‘less is more’. For Londoners, a lack of time has always been one of the top stress factors. If we know how to prioritise and stand in others’ shoes in the manner that the 3MT’s show us how to do, acing that notoriously hard job interview or winning the hearts of research funding organizations may become a lot easier.

If you still think that public speaking really not for you, there is also a ‘Dance Your PhD’ Competition. Organised by the reputable research journal, AAAS/Science, it runs every year and entries are judged on how well you convey your PhD thesis via dance. This is just another amazingly interesting way of portraying your research and engaging the general public. Though if you choose 3MT instead, you run less of a risk of your flatmate running off the stage in fear when your ‘dance’ begins.