Episode 48 – How to manage public speaking nerves

Nerves are a completely normal part of giving a talk and as you’ve probably heard many times – nerves are a good thing! Feeling nervous means you care about this presentation which will help you to do a great job. But nerves can also be very unsettling and even completely debilitating. The good news is that there are plenty of things you can do to help manage your nerves. In this episode, Michael and Jen share their advice on what you can do before and during a talk to get your nerves under control and not only give a fantastic talk, but enjoy it too.

Here are a couple of useful articles to help you learn to manage nerves:

Transcript

Jen (00:00:00)
Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk SciComm, a podcast by the University of Melbourne Science Communication Teaching Team.
I’m Associate Professor Jen Martin and my wonderful co-host is Dr Michael Wheeler and we believe that science isn’t finished until it’s communicated.

Jen (00:00:46)
Hello everybody and a very warm welcome to another episode of Let’s Talk SciComm, my favourite place to be, especially when I get to be with you Michael. Hello!

Michael (00:00:59)
Hey Jen, excited to be here. Excited or am I nervous? I don’t know. Can’t tell the difference.

Jen (00:01:06)
I love your silky smooth segues Michael. We are indeed talking about nerves today.
Anyone who’s listened to a few of our episodes will know that we kind of have two different kinds of episodes. Sometimes we love to interview scientists who are really active communicators and learn from them.
But we also like to have how-to episodes where we explore an area that we know from our work with scientists every day is an issue for people. And nerves are just such an incredibly normal part of public speaking. It’s something that pretty much everyone I’ve ever met who ever speaks in public or even just speaks to really small groups experiences.
I think it’s an interesting one, isn’t it Michael? Because we’ve all heard this idea that nerves are actually a really good sign. You know, we say, “Well, if you’re not nervous, it means you don’t care.” So it’s good that you’re nervous.
But on the other hand, just because it might be good and a sign that you really care about the outcome of a particular talk or presentation or what it is, that doesn’t stop nerves being something that can be really stressful and quite debilitating and really unsettling.
So we thought today that we would talk all about how we think we can all deal a little bit better with the nerves that come from being a science communicator who shares their science in front of people.

Michael (00:02:49)
Yeah. And I think it’s part of getting out there and putting yourself out there. There will be a certain level of nerves. And I think it’s just about having an optimal amount because as you say, a little bit, it’s good, but too much, maybe not so much.

Jen (00:02:57)
Optimal nerves.

Michael (00:02:59)
But there’s absolutely things that you can do to help deal with nerves.

Jen (00:03:03)
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what we want to get to today. But before we start going into all of our advice and tips on how we can manage nerves better Michael, I want to have a bit of open discussion here.
Have you, do you experienced nerves before you give a talk? Are there any particular situations you can think of that you remember being quite nervous?

Michael (00:03:21)
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve given lots of talks and I still get nervous before talks to varying different degrees. But I remember one time being really really nervous was when I was doing the Three Minute Thesis competition.

Jen (00:03:35)
High pressure.

Michael (00:03:36)
It was high pressure. I mean being on stage, yeah. I just remember I [had] like a really wobbly leg. It was probably a bit comical.I didn’t look at it. I was like, I can’t look down there at my leg. What are you doing? But I imagined it as if there was an earthquake, the stage was moving and I was wobbling around that much. That’s kind of how I perceived it in my mind.
I guess nerves can manifest in lots of different ways, right?

Jen (00:04:00)
Oh, absolutely. And anyone who’s listening. You know, for you, it may be that you get really flushed cheeks or a rash down your neck or you get very sweaty or you get very shaky or your mind completely goes blank. I mean, I think people have very different experiences of being nervous for sure. Your voice can change.

Michael (00:04:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get the sweaty palms as well sometimes. And I’ve noticed a little bit in my voice where I go, I can go, tend to go a little bit squeaky. You just don’t know [what] symptoms are you going to get.
I think audience members understand. They know what it’s like being up there on stage. And so I’ve always found that a helpful mind frame anyway.

Jen (00:04:43)
You, you feel like someone’s more authentic. You know, someone who’s so, so highly polished in their presentation. Sometimes you just feel like this is just a performance. It’s an act. They’ve memorised this word for word. I’m not actually seeing the real person.
Whereas someone who is a little bit nervous, however you perceive that, I’m actually more interested in what they have to say genuinely. Because I think, oh, this person does really care. They, they care about me, they want to give me something, so…

Michael (00:05:08)
And how about yourself, Jen? Have you experienced much nerves in the past or do you still experience nerves?

Jen (00:05:13)
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean if I think back to sort of my really early public speaking days. So I was lucky enough to be an exchange student for a year overseas when I was 16.
And I remember I worked really really really hard on the presentation that I gave to the Rotary Club who was hosting me overseas.
And so I gave this very polished presentation, probably partly so polished because I was giving it in, you know, in a non-native language. I worked really hard on it.
And then when I came back to Australia I also needed to give a presentation to the Rotary Club who had sponsored me here. And I don’t know if I was just being kind of arrogant that you know, I thought oh I’ve been overseas for a year, I’ll be fine.
But on reflection I didn’t prepare for that talk properly. I just sort of thought I’ll get up and wing it. And although these days I, I can mostly wing it if I need to. Back then you know, I was 17.
And I remember just coming really unstuck and realising in the moment that I hadn’t planned what I was going to say and feeling very very uncomfortable and getting bright red in my cheeks and just feeling really ashamed that here was this organisation that had sponsored me to spend a year overseas, and I hadn’t planned what I was going to say.
And you know, then I think about the first time I was ever on radio and I was incredibly nervous. But look I, I definitely still get nervous now. No question. I found, particularly during these COVID years when I did a lot of MC-ing online events. And you’d be sitting on your own, in your room, about to go and host this event with sometimes thousands of people.
And just that moment of I don’t know if I can do this. Like why did they ask me to host this event? I don’t think I can pull this off. Can I, can I pretend that I’ve lost my Internet connection and text them and say “I’m sorry, you’ll have to find somebody else”. Like how can I get out of this? But once I start, I’m always fine. It’s that real anxiety beforehand…

Michael (00:06:52)
Yeah, yeah.

Jen (00:06:49)
… Where you experience this incredible self doubt. I don’t know if I can do this today. But once I start I’m generally fine. But yeah, nerves are absolutely still a part of my life for sure, no question.

Michael (00:07:05)
Yeah, and I suppose it’s a bit like the impostor syndrome, where everyone experiences it, you’re the only one experiencing it. So it’s really good to hear that even someone has experienced as yourself Jen still gets nervous.
But I suppose while it is completely normal to get nervous, it’s still possible that it gets in the way, even just in the fact that you’re thinking about a lot of other stuff.
So you might be thinking about your cheeks going bright red or thinking about what other people are thinking of you. And I think it can still, it can get in the way a little bit.
So I think it is worthwhile touching on few of the things that you can do to help deal with nerves, not that you’ll ever make them go away completely, but just dealing with them in a way where you kind of accept them, but you can still get on with whatever task you got to do.
So you talked about preparation there. There’s definitely things that you can do to prepare. The first one just being know your goal and even if that goal is just my goal here is to stand up, speak in front of this group. I haven’t done anything like this before, but I just want to get the experience or you know, whatever it might be.

Jen (00:08:16)
Yeah, and I think being really clear on what a successful outcome would be because you can’t ever expect yourself to do a perfect job. There’s no such thing as perfection in, in this world.
But as you say, what’s the goal? What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to give to this audience? I think is really important and, and that then leads us I think to this kind of golden maxim of effective communication is always about know your audience.
And that means having a clear idea of who’s going to be there when you give this talk so that you can pitch your message appropriately to them.
But more than that I think it’s about recognising… When we think about public speaking, we tend to focus on ourselves so much. We sort of think it’s all about me and and how am I going to look and how am I going to come across and who’s going to be judging me?
But if we can really reframe that thinking and think about actually, it’s all about the audience. It’s all about these people who are giving you their two most precious things that they have and that’s their time and their attention.
And if you stop thinking about yourself so much and concentrate fully on them and in every way that you present. So your body language, your eyes, everything is about wanting to genuinely connect with this audience, give them something of value, take on feedback from them as you’re speaking.
You know, as soon as you focus fully on your audience. It really helps I believe with nerves because you’re just not worrying about yourself so much.
It’s so… So nerves are normal, right? And your aim is not to not feel nervous. But your aim is to not be worried about those nerves, to kind of notice them and say, “Oh yep, I’m feeling nervous. That’s normal and to be expected. Now I’m going to get on with the job”.
That’s what we’re aiming for. And I find as soon as I think mostly about the audience rather than myself, it really helps.

Michael (00:09:51)
Yeah. And when you start to think about the audience, you realise they’re made up of people. Unless you’re doing a presentation at the zoo, in which case you know, there could be some lions and lemurs involved. But you realise that they’re just people at the end of the day, just like you.
And I think imagining it as kind of a discussion and having embedded within that discussion a really clear message. Because oftentimes you’ll think that the audience is going to remember everything I say and that’s not the case. And oftentimes, it’s if the audience can come away with one clear message from whatever you’re speaking about, you’ve done your job and that kind of takes the pressure off a little bit.

Jen (00:10:31)
Hmm yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the other things in terms of preparation that really helps me as well as being really clear on you know, who am I speaking with and what’s my one message and what’s my goal.
For me, having an idea of what the space is like that I’m going to be speaking in makes a big difference ’cause you know, it really sort of visualising how am I going to do this and how am I going to stand confidently or whatever it is.
It really helps me to know the space so and of course, speaking on you know, in an online setting versus an in person setting, they are totally different in terms of in nerves.
I think for many of us, we sort of expect it that when we are presenting in an online setting that we somehow wouldn’t be as nervous ’cause you might be in your own home. You know, you might be wearing your comfy trackie dacks and your Ugg boots and whatever.
And, and you sort of should feel more comfortable. But in fact, I think online presentations are almost more nerve-wracking because you don’t have that ability to engage with your audience. You can’t read their body language.
Sometimes you know, if you’re in a webinar situation you can’t even see a single face. It’s just you talking to your computer on your own.
But knowing what it’s goig to be: is it a room? A big room, a small room? Am I going to have a microphone? Where is the audience going to be? Is it online? You know, all of those things, knowing that stuff in advance, I think can really help calm the nerves because you know what’s going to come.

Michael (00:11:51)
Yeah. And even just knowing you know, which side of the slides am I going to be standing on just gives you a sense of being familiar with that space. So yeah, absolutely.
And another big one for me is not cramming too much into the talk. That if you’ve got a 10 minute talk to do. You know, I think this is something that my friend Josh spoke about recently on the podcast.
A ten minute talk arguably should be an eight minute talk slowed down. So that you’ve got plenty of time for pausing if you forget what you say. You’re not in a rush to get everything out and you just feel a lot more comfortable. So I think trying not to cram in too much.

Jen (00:12:27)
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s just so essential to know 100% sure how long do you have. I know people who kind of go into talk saying “Oh yeah, I’m not sure if it was 15 minutes or half an hour”.
You know, you have to know that. I think it’s really important. And there’s nothing worse than realising that you’re running out of time and that you, you know, you, you want to say so much and you can’t do it. So I think that’s super important.
The other thing I would say in terms of preparation is also make sure you practice and definitely out loud. So not just sort of going over things in your head, but speaking out loud like I am now. And also in front of an audience, if you possibly can.
And I remember years ago I had this wonderful student who was very sincere about wanting to improve her public speaking skills. But she lived alone. And so she got a whole lot of soft toys and set up all these soft toys around a room. So she felt like she kind of had eyes watching her, and she could sort of do a performance to her soft toys. And that helped her feel like she had mastered her nerves a little bit because she was practising speaking to an audience, which I thought was great.

Michael (00:13:25)
Yeah, that is great. And would be no hard questions with an audience full of soft toys as well.

Jen (00:13:30)
Well, you don’t know that Michael. Don’t make any assumptions.

Michael (00:13:35)
Oh yeah, I suppose. Yeah. I’ve seen it in the movies, soft toys coming alive.
And I think another one then is related to this practicing in front of the audience is asking for feedback. Practicing to a variety of different people. You know, your friends and family. And just asking them what they think.
Just remembering though feedback is always varied. So if you’re asking for lots of feedback, you’ll probably get some conflicting advice. But you have to be the judge of what am I going to take on board and what am I going to discard?
But certainly feedback can be really useful and it really helps you just put yourself in the shoes of the audience.

Jen (00:14:12)
Yeah, I think getting feedback from other people is so helpful, but I also wouldn’t mistrust kind of your own feedback. If you possibly can video or audio record yourself and then watch it back, listen back to yourself and just kind of sit back and and see how you come across.
And of course nobody likes the sound of their own voice. Nobody likes watching videos of themselves. But if you can get past that discomfort and just kind of listen to yourself. Do you sound enthusiastic? Do you sound like you care? Are you speaking in a conversational way, or does it sound very stilted?
You know, you can learn so much. And that’s why we ask our students to video themselves speaking very often in class and then ask them to watch back and reflect on what they’ve learned. Because that, that reflection process, although it might feel hard is incredibly useful.

Michael (00:14:58)
Yeah. And I think something we’ve all become familiar with in recent times is with online presentations. A lot of the time they can be recorded. And so a lot of the time we’re recording ourselves. We’re watching back over it.
And I think something that’s a bit of a challenge is actually the temptation to do a perfect presentation and to have absolutely no flaws, absolutely flawless.
But there is no such thing as a perfect presentation, and I think you can’t let perfection get in the way of excellence.
So I think part of it is just cultivating an attitude where you realise, you know, you’re not going to be perfect and it’s just about being up there and being yourself. And that includes being genuine. And you don’t have to be perfect.
If you say the wrong word, that’s fine. If you forget to say something, that’s fine as well.

Jen (00:15:52)
Well and the reality is that your audience doesn’t know what you’d plan to say. So often you know, if you speak with somebody who’s just given a talk and they’ve come down and you say, “Well done, that was great”. And they say, “Oh, but I completely forgot this bit”. And I say, “Well, that’s OK. I didn’t know you were even planning to say that bit”.
So I think yeah, a lot of self compassion. And and not to try and disregard people who you know, our listeners who might be saying yeah, “but you don’t understand just how nervous I get it, just how hard this is for me”. We do get it. We’ve taught thousands of science students how to become more effective public speakers. And I know so many students who’ve been honest with us about just how incredibly hard they find public speaking. So we get it.
But with the sort of preparation that we’re talking about, you can absolutely get better and just be compassionate with yourself. It will never be perfect. You will never be perfect. Come back to your goal. You’re trying to share a message. Something that you care about with an audience.
And it’s highly likely that they will be on your side. And if you’re honest with them. You know, “I’m so sorry, I’ve just forgotten what I wanted to say next”. Or “I just realised I didn’t explain something really important to you. Let me go back a moment”. You know, we’re in real time. You can invite your audience to really support you. And if you need to go over something again, you can.

Michael (00:17:04)
Yeah, absolutely. And just visualise yourself getting out there and giving it your best shot. Try and enjoy the experience in the moment.
And I suppose when you’re in the moment, there are also some things that can be helpful. You know, we’ve just talked about preparing and how preparation can give you a lot of confidence going into a talk and really help you be less nervous. But also nerves are unavoidable on the day.
Something that I find helpful on the day is… You know, I’m a coffee drinker Jen. But can’t have too many coffees before a presentation because that does not help. Arriving early, being hydrated, the right amount of caffeine. So maybe that means a cup of tea or a nice cup of Irish breakfast.

Jen (00:17:53)
Sounds perfect.

Michael (00:17:59)
I know, yeah. Haven’t had one in a while now. So I’m going to…
And also just making sure you uhh, you have something to eat as well, that you’re not going into it fasted.
I think all of those things are sensible to do and can help you in the moment.

Jen (00:18:16)
Yeah. For me, it’s about arriving early and knowing that I’m neither hungry nor thirsty, but also that I’m not busting to go to the loo. You know, it’s just kind of being prepared, I think all of that makes it much better for me.
And then for me in the moment, the most important thing is to go back to my kind of why. You know, why am I doing this? And for me, it’s always about sort of seeing public speaking as an absolute privilege.
You know, it really is. If you’re asking people to give you their time and attention, it’s a huge privilege to to have the opportunity to speak with people. And to remember that as we said earlier, these are actually just people. They’re not this amorphous kind of scary mass of humans trying to make us feel terrible. They’re just people.
And so for me, it becomes about how can I best connect with them. So how I stand or sit, how I use my body.
You know I don’t, wouldn’t ever stand behind a lectern. I would always come out and try and get closer to people. I would make sure I can see as many people as possible. I’m making eye contact with people. I’m trying to read their body language.
I’m really trying to… One of my colleagues talks about giving a talk as being like a dance, where you are dancing with your audience. And you know, I like to think of it that way. What am I giving them? What are they giving me? How can I listen and take on board what they’re sharing with me at the same time as I’m speaking.
All of that I think is, is really helpful to me, to get over thinking about myself and to just instead focus on the audience. And then I don’t feel so nervous.

Michael (00:19:39)
Yeah, yeah, cause it’s not all on you then. Yeah, I think that’s definitely helpful.
It’s also interesting there [is] a whole area of research around breathing and how breathing can be helpful in some of these situations.
What I really like about this is that the breathing techniques are completely free. So they’re very easy to implement, but they’re also scientifically validated as well.
So that you know, by specifically changing your breathing, you can actually induce physiological changes that can help you deal with the nerve.
So yeah, just kind of having a look into this. There are kind of two main mechanisms, I suppose as to how this works. So the first one is being the concentration of CO2 in your blood. And that can affect how your brain works, because it affects how much oxygen gets into your brain.
So you’ll know that when you breathe, the reason why you breathe is so that you can bring oxygen into your body, but you can also blow off carbon dioxide that your body creates.
And so breathing is a way that you can balance the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. But a lot of people can tend to over breathe naturally. You know, breathing too quickly, especially if you’re breathing through your mouth.
And slowing down your breathing can actually help balance the oxygen and CO2 levels. So when you over breathe, you breathe off too much CO2. So the level of CO2 in your blood goes down and that’s actually a bad thing for getting oxygen into your brain. Because when that happens, the oxygen is bound more tightly to your, to the haemoglobin in your red blood cells. You know, less oxygen getting into your brain. So slowing your breathing down can actually help with that.
There’s lots of techniques for that. So they’ve got things like alternate nostril breathing, where you block one nostril and you go you know, breathe in one and breathe out the other.
There’s another technique which is called box breathing, which is where you will…

Jen (00:21:42)
Oh, I know this one. This one’s a good one.

Michael (00:21:44)
Yeah, yeah. You breathe in for let’s say 2 seconds. Hold your breath for two seconds. Breathe out for two seconds. So everything is balanced.
The other interesting area is heart rate. So we know that breathing affects your heart rate and when you inhale that your heart rate speeds up slightly and when you exhale, it slows down.
So you can take advantage of that. And if you do breathing techniques that emphasise longer exhaling, that can help slow your heart rate down.
So there’s one interesting one that I came across called cyclical sighing, also known as the physiological sigh, which is basically a double inhale followed by a longer slow exhale.

Jen (00:22:31)
I mean that’s, that’s one of the things that occurs to me with what you’re saying. I have no doubt that these breathing exercises would be incredibly helpful just before you give a talk or, or even during giving a talk. You know, trying to be really aware of slowing down your breathing, taking pauses.
But I have no doubt that all of these are similar to many other kind of mindfulness or meditative techniques that they help all of the time, right. I know my kids at school were taught box breathing just as a way of you know, managing if you’re feeling worried about something or if there’s something escalating in the playground and you need to calm down a bit. They’re taught box breathing as a, as a technique which I think is great.
The other area that I’ve done a bit of reading about in terms of research that I think is really important to consider when we are talking about public speaking. And that is this whole idea that I’m sure many of our listeners will have heard of that it’s really important that we reframe our sense of worry or anxiety and try and change our thinking around that to seeing it as excitement.
So there’s been quite a lot of research done on this, quite a lot of studies. We’ll share some links in our show notes. But essentially, when you feel very anxious just before a talk, obviously that’s because you have stress hormones in your system.
And you can’t just get rid of those stress hormones even if you are employing these breathing techniques. You know, if you feel nervous, it’s actually a positive thing. We need to reframe it and not see this sense of kind of heightened arousal I suppose, see that as a bad thing. These hormones are helping our bodies to feel ready for something challenging, something big, something different, something new.
And so one of the research articles which I really like, got people to feel that sense of “Ohh. I’m a bit worked up here”. And instead of talking to themselves about this being a bad thing, “Oh, I feel so nervous. I’m so worried. I don’t want to do this. I hate public speaking. Why do I, why did I agree to this?” All the things that can go through your mind.
Instead, they were encouraged to tell themselves I feel really excited. I am excited. And that can turn into a conversation along the lines of: Am I fortunate, am I lucky. What a privilege that people are going to listen to me. I’m really excited to share my work.
And you know, listening to that, you can kind of think Ohh, come on. When I’m really scared, I’m not going to be able to convince myself that I’m excited.
But I’ve taught this for so many years now and it’s amazing how many students will come back to me later and say “You know what? The first few times I tried to tell myself I was excited. I just didn’t believe myself, I just felt very scared. But over time, the more I tried to convince myself that actually this was something that I was excited about. Over time now actually, that’s how I feel. And I don’t… I, I still get that sense of oh, I’m a bit sweaty or a bit shaky or a bit flushed or whatever it is. But now I just see that as this is a good sign because I’m really looking forward to this opportunity to speak”.
So that whole reframing as it’s not bad to feel this way. You know, it’s actually a really positive thing. I think that’s very powerful.

Michael (00:25:21)
And now everyone knows my big secret, Jen. When I say I’m excited for today’s episode, I’m actually reframing my anxiety. So there you go.

Jen (00:25:30)
You do. You do always say you’re excited. So there we go. You’re reframing live on the podcast. I love it.

Michael (00:25:36)
But it works, it works.

Jen (00:25:37)
It does. Yeah, it totally works.

Michael (00:25:38)
And I think, I think the thing about it is that we’ve talked about a lot of… we’ve given a lot of tips around this. It’s not that everything that we’ve said is guaranteed to work for you.
All of these things are really just tools that you can use. So we would encourage you to try them out and you might find some things that we’ve said are helpful and others don’t for you.

Jen (00:25:57)
100%. And I think the key thing that I’d love everyone to know — If you do struggle with nerves is that your goal is not to never feel nervous. That is not where we want you to get to. Because if you don’t feel nervous, you’re probably not very invested in the outcome, in which case it’s going to be very hard for you to give an interesting, engaging, passionate, excited talk.
Your goal is just to be comfortable with feeling nervous, to recognise that you know this is going to happen. You know how that presents for you. You know that this is your body gearing up to do something that’s challenging. And to say, “OK, I’m going to turn that into excitement. I’m going to employ my breathing exercises. I’m going to do all the preparation so I can feel comfortable that I’m as prepared as I can be”.
And really, your goal is just to maintain the ability to think during your talk. That’s really the goal for me. It’s not to be so calm that you come across as boring and disinterested. Instead, it’s to be there, to be kind of energetic, however that looks for you.
But to just keep being able to think so that you notice if you’ve forgotten something important and you can backtrack and clarify. To be able to focus on your audience and to look at their faces and their body language. To work out if you’re confusing them or boring them or whatever it is.
You know that, that’s what you’re aiming for, to still have the presence of mind to be an active participant in the talk. Rather than just: you start and then you have no idea what you’ve said and then it’s all over and you sit down and think, “Oh my goodness, I have no recollection of what I actually said”.
You know that’s, that’s a bit uncomfortable I think, to not know what you said. So you just want to be able to maintain your ability to think.

Michael (00:27:30)
 Yeah, yeah, definitely. That’s a realistic approach.
And it probably know when you get to that sweet spot of, OK, I’m, I’m nervous. But I’ve actually done this before. I’ve felt these feelings before and it worked out OK.

Jen (00:27:39)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Michael, I feel like we’ve given lots of thoughts and advice and tips from our experiences.
But obviously most people we think who will be listening to this podcast, you are also all probably quite experienced public speakers or getting, getting to become more experienced when it comes to speaking. We’d love to hear your tips to share.
So as you know, we’re also part of an endeavour every week called #MySciMonday with our wonderful friend Amelia, from the Avid Research Podcast.
And this week, our prompt on social media for MySciMonday was share your tips on how to deal with your nerves. So we would love you to jump onto Twitter or Instagram and tell us what, what have you learned over the, the years or weeks or months of speaking to help you be a more effective public speaker and to manage those nerves? And we will be sharing all of your tips.

Michael (00:28:27)
Yeah. And I think that’ll be great. You know, we might add a few things to our, to our toolbox that we can try out.
But also just knowing that everyone feels nervous from you know, students to professors, from junior people to senior people, just normalises it. And I think that’s really helpful at the end of the day.

Jen (00:28:45)
Yeah, absolutely. So the main thing is to take every opportunity you can to share your work with people. If somebody invites you to give a talk, try really hard not to fall in the trap of thinking, Oh, I’m gonna get nervous. I don’t wanna do it. Instead turn that into I’m gonna get nervous and it’s gonna be really exciting.
And we just encourage you to remember that the more we practice, the easier it gets. It, it just changes so much the more often you take up opportunities to speak.
So take every opportunity you can to share your work and thank you so much for listening. And we will be back with another season of Let’s Talk SciComm in a little while.
And in the meantime for the next few weeks, we are going to be sharing our most listened to how-to episodes. We’ve got some episodes about how to manage procrastination, how to manage imposter syndrome, how to not be boring, how to improve your science writing.
We’ve got a whole lot of episodes that we know have been very popular with our audience in the past and we would like to share them with you again. So we hope if you haven’t already listened to them, that you’ll listen to them in the coming weeks.

Michael (00:29:45)
Yeah. So thanks for listening and you will hear from us soon.

Michael (00:30:15)
Thanks for listening and thanks also to our wonderful production team, Stephanie Wong and Steven Tang for making these episodes happen behind the scenes. And thanks also to you, our listeners, for your support.
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