Every time I attend conferences and seminars held by professors and students, I am attentive, listening to what they say and hoping to interact with them and ask them questions in the Q & A session. But I always end up being less confident to ask them questions because I am worried my questions are too 'stupid' and 'simple'. Have you had this experience and anxiety?

In conferences and seminars, how do you guys deal with very difficult questions from the audience? It is hard to predict what questions the audience will ask. If I really dont know the answers, should I be honest to tell the audience that I really dont know them? Any other way that people usually do to handle this situation?

Thanks!

Hi Dottottung

I think everyone has these few conference nerves. I've presented more papers than I care to remember now and I still tense up a little before the time comes to give a talk. The following are tips from my experience (which is Humanities-based). I'm sure other folks here will be able to offer their own.

When it comes to *asking* questions, I tend to jot down a couple as the talk goes on. Sometimes I ask them in the Q/A, but quite often I'll go chat to the speaker afterwards - particularly if it's something I'd like to have a proper discussion about.

I'd really recommend this if you're a little nervous about drawing the attention of everyone else in the audience and would prefer to just chat with the speaker. In my experience they never mind this (some prefer it) - though it's polite to let them get a coffee / etc first!

Getting used to meeting and chatting with speakers in this way will probably boost your confidence when it comes to speaking up in the formal Q&A, but even if it doesn't, that's not a big deal: a conference in which all academic discussion was restricted to brief spurts of Q&A would be pretty bizarre (and boring).

With respect to *answering* questions, well, it's natural to be nervous. After I gave my first couple of papers I sat praying that noone would ask me anything! You don't want that though - a question is pretty much always a good thing: it means someone cared about what you had to say and thought you were worth discussing it with.

It's easy to panic about that one horrible question from an evil professor who inexplicably decides to eat you alive in front of an audience. People may have their horror stories, but, honestly, I've *never* seen this happen and I've spoken at / attended an awful lot of events.

If you do get a question you're not prepared for, that's fine - and totally normal. After all, the questions are the one bit of a presentation you *can't* prepare for ;) I've tried jotting down answers to a few 'likely' questions before, but they never actually get asked.

If you think you might know the answer, take your time to formulate it. Noone expects you to be able to summon up everything related to your research in a couple of seconds. Looking like you're putting thought into an answer is a good thing.

If someone asks a question and you don't know the answer, it's OK to admit that. Say it's something you hadn't yet considered, or a stage in your research you hadn't reached and that you'll look into - thank the questioner for the suggestion and perhaps go and chat with them after the paper.

Hope that all helps a little bit! - Sure others will also have some advice.

Mark

In terms of asking questions, it took me a while to realise that my brain works best and is smartest when I have had time to process and think about a topic. I don't think fast enough during talks, so unless the topic is something I have spent time thinking about before I am not likely to come up with an interesting question during the talk. I find it hard to listen to the talk and process my own criticisms/comments at the same time. So I choose to listen and focus and do the thinking bit later.

It took me a while to realise that this is completely okay. It doesn't mean I am less smart than the rest of the audience, or that I didn't understand the material. It just means that I need to take that extra reflection time, to organise my thoughts in a way that I am confident to ask the question. My brain just prefers to work slightly differently to some others. And because I suffer from depression/anxiety I am absolutely not going to ask a question until I have had a chance to think it through properly.

It's annoying. But something I just have to deal with. My usual course of action is to approach the speaker after the talk and say something like "I really enjoyed your talk, and want to talk to you about it more in the future when I've had a chance to reflect on what you've said. Would you mind if I emailed you?" I haven't yet had anyone say no to that request. And in fact, have had some very productive email conversations about interesting topics and have followed up with potential future collaborations as a result.

Thanks, everybody esp Mark_B. very useful advice. thx thx again!!!!