My biggest strategy for making people understand my research is to avoid industry jargon. I already have some experience with this when people ask me about what my research is. When doing biomedical research as I am, it’s very easy to start using big words that I know what they mean but other people who are not in the industry do not. Sometimes I catch myself doing this and I can see the person’s eyes begin to glaze over. When that happens I usually take a step back and make myself re explain things using regular language. Another strategy that I use is that when I am writing my research proposal I always make myself take a step back and try to explain my entire proposal in one or two sentences. After I am able to do that I know two things. First, I know that I truly understand my entire proposal. Second, I always just remember those sentences and I repeat them every time someone asks me about my proposal. Obviously, I will elaborate if they ask me to but mostly those two sentences are enough to give an entire gist of my project. Those are two of my biggest strategies when telling people about my research to give them a good idea of my project without confusing them too much.

I am hoping to become a doctor in the future and that entails working with plenty of audiences that are not familiar with the industry jargon. First, it is important to make sure that your patient understands what you are talking about. Therefore, explaining yourself well is vital to your success as a doctor. Recently, we have seen the importance of doctors being able to explain themselves well during the COVID-19 Pandemic. With there being so much confusion around the pandemic at times doctors have added to the confusion because of an inability to explain things well enough to the everyday person. One example that comes to mind is the mixed messaging on masking in the very beginning of the pandemic. If they were able to effectively explain the science behind masking then its possible that we could have avoided all of the controversy surrounding masking that exists now. Instead, there was mixed messaging and now there is still a huge controversy that surrounds masking. 

P.S enjoy this picture of me in the lab at the end of a 19 hour day (7 am-2 am) 🙂