Decoding Your STEM Career

CHAPTER 2

Build Competence in All Facets of Communications

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson,

American philosopher

I didn’t know I had a fear of presenting until I discovered how terrible I was at it.

I have a memory of a model bridge competition near the end of my first year of engineering school. There was an audience of about 100 people, primarily students and staff, plus a few family members. During the dean’s introduction, he asked each three-person team to select one spokesperson to present a five-minute overview of their design. After each presentation, the team’s bridge was put in place, and a machine was positioned to apply an increasing force onto it until it cracked. My team nominated me to speak, ...