Sorry to start a new thread, I'm not able to sleep, still thinking about bad talk I did recently and need a bit of advice.

After the talk, I only briefly saw my supervisor and she said that it was fine, few seocnds afterwards that it was good, really good, but knowing her, by the tone of voice I know that she was just being nice. I was dragged around by other people and didn't really get a chance to talk to her properly . But that's all beside the point.

I didn't talk to her since, I'm meeting her next week and don't want to call before that and be annoying. Should I bring up the talk in the next meeting?

She will most likely just press on with more work, but the talk is really bothering me. I want to get past her being polite and get some true feedback and pointers. I mean I really wasn't able to answer any questions and it's not all in my head.

Wait till the next meeting, then bring it up in conversation (some time into the discussion when you're both at ease). Ask your sup whether there was anything that they think you could improve on, pointers etc.

I think most of all that you ned to take a step back and congratulate yourself on successfully getting through your talk. You're being incredibly hard on yourself and continuing to beat yourself up over something like this will only deplete your confidence further. In time you WILL be able to answer questions and will not feel so lost. But these things take time. Don't hold this recent episode as a failure on your part to be a competent PhD student. You clearly are, or you wouldn't be being so hard on yourself!

As for academics asking questions, you'll also learn to realise that these fall into 2 camps. The ones who genuinely want to know something (and therefore ask succinct questions without expecting a full on debate), and those who like want to hear the sound of their own voice (usually the ones with years of expereince!) who ponitificate so much they don't actually ask a real question!

contd...

in the case of the latter type of academic asking a question and taking all day about it, if I've been feeling brave I've sometimes laughed and shot back "I'm sorry, what was the question again?"! It often gets a titter from the audience and the person asking is then pressured to put it more plainly, and often are caught off guard - it's quite funny to see!

Another good response is:
"thank you for raising that, I feel I can't answer that right now, but I would be interested in talking to you about it afterwards"
OR
"that's a really interesting point, I will look into that"

Overall, DON'T WORRY you will be fine. AND DON'T QUIT BECAUSE OF THIS!

Maybe try to write down what you think was wrong with the talk and then think about how you can take action to address where you went wrong for next time. You can always say to your supervisor, "i thought that maybe my talk had *this problem* and I'd like to improve my presentation skills for next time. It's a way of being positive and not just fishing for compliments.

I am often the last person to follow my own advice but you have to forget about it or improve from it otherwise (I know from experience) you will stagnate in your negativity and insecurities. It's just not productive and you owe yourself more.

Can you go on a presentations skills course? We've all had presentations that didn't go as well as we hoped (or worse) and have lived to tell the tale. Good luck and feel better soon

Just be aware:

Although its obvious that "you" felt the talk went badly, it is most likely that no-one else remembers. To be quite frank, no one really expects you to have all the answers (especially not at your stage).

But enough people have said this to you already on your previous thread (and your supervisor by the sound of things), so I reckon you are actually asking for something different- validation and reassurance. This is quite natural, especially for beginners who are fairly new to the material and its even worse for the PhD students who tend to be perfectionistic, high achievers.

con't

I suspect that if your supervisor says "It was fine" when you next meet them, you won't like it. However, if he says "Actually that was shit" you won't really like that either, so you are already on course for a lose-lose situation.

If it is still really troubling you, you could:

a) Say to your supervisor "Regardless of whether it went good or bad could you give me one/ two areas I could improve on".

b) Go to the person that asked your questions and ask them how could you have done things better? What would they have expected? etc etc.

This is quite a good way to see if that academic is a hard core scholar who is pressing for excellence in their field (and if so they WILL give you the pointers you are desparately seeking) or the sort that is ego-driven and takes delight in bringing others down (you will know this if they make you feel like shit, despite your efforts to better yourself). If so, you can safely ignore what they have to say.

Either way you win.

Badhaircut you are right in some ways.

I'm generally a negative person. Glass is half empty, expecting the worst etc. I'm not looking for praise from my sup. because I KNOW the talk didn't go well. Any praise wouldn't be genuine. there is no validition when things are shit, they are just shit.

My sup has always told me that I'm a great student (before the talk). This not going well must have been a big dissapointment for her too. To be honest I'm really afraid that they are all laughing about how crap I was behind my back. hopefully, just paranoia.

Everybody here has helped me a lot. I was on the verge of writing 2am email to my sup last night when I got home drunk, but this forum held me back.

Cont.

What I was thinking of saying to my sup at the next meeting is something like that I wasn't happy with how talk went, I have expected better and that I want to ask how important it is for me to know answers to questions that guy was asking if they pop up in the future. (as some people have told me afterwards that his Q's were irrelevant and I shouldn't bother). They were certanly in a broader area to what I was concentrating on.

In the perfect world, I would want to share my dissapointment with sup on how things went openly and honestly, and plan how we can avoid same thing happening in the future. However, of course, perfect world does not exist.

I would agree with what badhaircut said. I was stay away from saying you thought it went badly and pretend to be positive if it is a professional relationship you have with your supervisor. If he/she is more of a mentor then maybe share all your feelings. I would approach it by saying you would like some help on improving your presentation skills and/or pick specific areas/slides to look at. It could be uncomfortable to discuss you doing badly-especially if they were being polite, and they may start associating you with the "bad" talk. Academics tend to be quite thick-skinned about this sort of thing and you're expected to sort it out, use some initiative and get on with it! You could possibly try getting an opinion from someone else in the talk as it may have come across better than you thought, and you might be being overly critical.

I've had some dreadful talks. Once when my confidence was really low my advisor ripped my work to pieces and people approached me afterwards to say how that was really uncalled for. Another time my supervisor took over my questions (more on someone else's project) and spoke with his departmental buddies into coffee completely ignoring me so I ended up just leaving when it was officially over.

==Another time my supervisor took over my questions

This is what happened to me. My sup took over questions (which was fair enough because I was completly silent), I just stood there and then when easy questions that I could have answered were asked my sup just kept answering. I actually started talking louder over her so that I get a chance to at least answer something. But it didn't look good. Afterwards people came up to talk to my sup and largely ignored me

As for bringing up the talk I would say my sup and I have a relationship that's bordering on friendship, she tends to be too nice when critising my work though and I hate that. I will see, she might bring it up herself. To be honest I'm suprised she didn't call me at all afterwards as that's the sort of thing she does. Makes me think that I was so crap she just doesn't want anything to do with me anymore. I guess I will see next week.