Professionalism and Good Communication in the Sciences

I really do hate to be one of those “not like the other girls” girls, but I noticed something when I gave a talk at a conference this year, and months later I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about it.

I don’t give talks like other girls scientists.

Scientific talks are notoriously dry. Part of this is because the audience tends to be advanced enough in the field that, to anyone below that level of knowledge, the speaker may as well be using a foreign language. Assuming the speaker is correct about the level of their audience, this is forgivable. A layperson who stumbles into a genetics conferences is not the intended audience for the talks, geneticists are.

But another reason scientific talks are dry is because many, if not most, scientists suck at giving talks. And this isn’t entirely the fault of individual scientists, because most scientific training does not actually cover how to give a good talk. If you want to give better talks, you have to find people who are good at giving talks AND willing to provide you with constructive criticism, you have to be able to take that constructive criticism to heart, and you have to do that work essentially outside of your already high workload. The bar is low, and if your advisor doesn’t give good talks, then learning to give better talks is an additional task you have to complete on top of everything else.

Here’s something about me: I love giving talks. And I’ve been told I’m pretty good at it. And I’ve seen plenty of good scientific talks, but very few of them sound like mine do.

I believe the word my friend used this time around was “casual.” I use a conversational tone, I will dip into colloquial language when I’m summing up a point I’m making, and I am physically incapable of not making at least a couple jokes. My defense talk was probably the most serious I’ve ever been, and I still pre-loaded a few jokes in that baby. Both my defense and the conference talk were well-received, I should note!

Here’s something else about me: I probably spend too much time thinking about how to come off as “professional,” whatever that means. I remember in middle school I went through a phase where I only wrote with black pens because I thought that would help me be taken seriously (by whom, I cannot tell you). In grad school I didn’t put much stock in everyday professionalism, because it’s grad school, and it’s the academy, and it’s not like the faculty were in business casual. Or behaving professionally themselves, oftentimes.

I was also raised by a second-wave feminist who indirectly taught me that femininity is a weakness, and coming off as feminine is the same as coming off unprofessional. I don’t believe this anymore, and we’re working away on converting Mom, but I still worry if other people will think of me as unprofessional or unserious if I seem too “girly.”

And now I’m a Real Working Professional, with letters after my name and a job where they have entrusted me with a company credit card. It’s not a corporate environment, and thank god for that. It’s not academia either, and thank god for that. There’s very little direct or indirect messaging from my employer about how they define “professionalism” in personaly presentation, and honestly, thank god for that. That leaves just me and my own personal baggage to sort through.

I’ve got the clothing sorted out, mostly. I never wear dresses to conferences, and only occasionally to work at all. I mostly wear sensible shoes, primarily because I get cranky when my feet hurt and that’s not conducive to networking. Since I cut my hair short I wear makeup more often, because I get they/them’ed by well-meaning allies and I am a staunch she/her. I also like how I look with eyeliner on.

It’s the behavior that gets me overthinking. I’m a goofy person. I like telling jokes and getting laughs. I think using casual language in my talks helps me hammer my points home, and helps people remember me and what I study. My mother told me she saw a study somewhere that found that women who are funny are more likely to be thought of as intelligent. But I can’t quite shake the fear that being a goofball in my professional work is going to hurt me, if it hasn’t already.

And re-reading this all the morning after I have written it out, I realize how ridiculous this seems. I have a Ph.D., for fuck’s sake. Besides the professional capital that comes with an advanced degree in the field, it’s not like PhDs are known for being normal. I can tell jokes, I can be somewhat casual in my demeanor. A lot of people came up to me in the days after I gave my talk and told me “I saw your talk! I really liked it!” Why am I discounting them?