International take-off after PhD hand in

By Katherine Hutchinson*, SAEON Egagasini Node Tweet

Katherine (left) and her co-convenors (centre: Anne-Katrine Faber, right: Kira Rehfeld) at the EGU session on Climate Variability Across all Timescales Katherine presenting at the Royal Geographical Society in London

Austria-England-Netherlands-Belgium… the incredible Eurotrip that succeeded my PhD.

Often after handing in a large body of work such as a PhD thesis, the author can feel a slump. The “what now?” of academic life.

I was extremely lucky that I hardly had time to stress about the thesis before I was off on my academic tour of Europe. And slump it certainly was not!

Austria

First, I landed in Austria to attend the European Geophysical Union (EGU) Conference in Vienna. There I co-chaired a session on seasonal variability across all time and space scales.

Chairing a session was a wonderful lesson in presenting. I had to time the length of people’s presentations, and even stand up and shoo them off the stage politely when they were over their 15-minute limit. In doing so I learnt a lot about what a good presentation looks like.

From what I gathered, even at the highest levels when most people in the room are familiar with the method or study level, a good presenter always starts off with an introduction explaining WHAT the topic is and WHY this research is important. This grabs the listener and keeps them engaged.

Then the best thing is to pick 5 key results and stick to explaining these. This means 5 slides on results and 5 bullet points in your conclusions. Anything more during a 12-15-minute presentation and you are going to be galloping along after your introduction and your audience will be left eating dust behind you.

Then possibly the most important lesson learnt was to always leave time for questions. This is the space where you really get to shine. Where those engaged with your research get to interact with you in an unrehearsed way and your spontaneous and insightful answers can impress them. Running out of time and sitting down without having given the audience an opportunity to ask questions is the worst-case scenario in a conference talk.

After work pancakes on the river in Utrecht with Professor van Sebille and his team

Having learnt this early on in the trip, I immediately altered all my presentations, and boy what a good move that was! My EGU presentation was a roaring success, with five questions after the talk and three people approaching me after the session to ask for a copy of my recently submitted paper.

England

I took a day off in the middle of EGU and travelled to London where I presented on behalf of South Africa at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) on what we are doing in terms of monitoring the oceans around South Africa. What a privilege it was to be in the hallowed halls of the RGS and what an honour to present in the same spot as Darwin and Shackleton once did. This presentation, too, was a great success and so onwards and upwards I flew to the next step of my European adventure.

The Netherlands

During the second week of my trip I visited Utrecht University to meet with Professor Erik van Sebille, an ocean plastic and particle tracking specialist. Here I delivered a colloquium on my PhD research and then had the time to get into a few details.

A lesson that I learnt when presenting the long seminar was to take breaks after every “section” and ask the audience if they have any questions. This ensures people stay engaged and those who may be confused on a point can clear that up before you move on.

Belgium

Emboldened by my new strategy for presentations, I attended a workshop in Belgium on ocean temperature data quality control and presented on all the research I have done from my Honours to my PhD! I took the audience on a whirlwind tour of my postgraduate research and somehow, by following my newly learnt tricks, I believe I managed to keep the audience up to speed and cover the essential points.

Four countries in two weeks and many new connections made, I returned to Cape Town feeling energised and was in a very good headspace to deal with the PhD corrections that awaited me upon my return. These corrections have been accepted and I will graduate in June 2018.

My Eurotrip could not have come at a better time to enable me to advertise my PhD research, meet other scientists in my field and hone my presentation skills.

^* Katherine was a Professional Development Programme (PDP) student with Dr Juliet Hermes at SAEON’s Egagasini Node, working as part of the ASCA team. The Professional Development Programme of the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation aims to accelerate the development of scientists and research professionals in key research areas.