As I communicated in my first blog post, my research is generally about effects of radiation on computer memory. Obviously, when speaking to a general audience about my work, I can’t discuss all of details of it, as there are a lot of terminologies and concepts that are well out of the scope of other people’s majors. This means that I need to simplify the terminologies and concepts to the point where it can be easily understood by said general audience. However, I must be careful not to over-simplify and lose important information in the process. This balance between over-simplifying and not simplifying enough can sometimes be tricky to find. One technique that I could also use is, instead of simplifying, explaining the more advanced topics in terms of simpler ones. Of course, this method takes more time, but in some cases it is worthwhile. For example, in my research, there are quite a few software buzzwords that are worth explaining, but there are also quite a few that aren’t really relevant. This is yet another careful balance that I must maintain. Overall, there are a variety of methods that I can employ to communicate my work to a general audience.

                As I mentioned in my first blog post, my current professional goals are to go to graduate school, and, after that, get a non-academic job. In graduate school, I will probably be discussing my work with experts in my field, so there won’t be much of a need for simplification or explanation of terminologies when sharing my work. In terms of a job in industry, I expect to speak with people who have a general knowledge of computer engineering, but don’t know the specifics of what I’m doing. Since they would have a better understanding of these topics, I wouldn’t need to simplify as much, but it would still be necessary in some cases. For example, I might need to present my work at a company meeting, or to my boss. There still might be some instances that I would need to talk to the general public. An example of this would be me presenting a new product, in which simplification is completely necessary. However, even in this example, I would still have to be careful not to oversimplify: “This revolutionary new product…. does stuff.” All in all, I expect to interact with a broad range of audiences in my future career.