Give Group Meeting Again? I Just Went!
by
In lab vernacular, few words can elicit a fiery range of emotions like “group meeting”. Fear, panic, apathy, anger, frustration, embarrassment and nausea are not uncommon responses as a graduate student or postdoc reads the lab schedule and realizes they’re up next week. While some will feel they haven’t had enough time to obtain new data, others will feel a tremendous amount of pressure since it’s their only talk of the year. But who’s to say how many group meetings we should give in a year?… You.
Given the diversity in group meeting structures throughout universities and companies, it’s unreasonable to impose a one-size-fits-all method to running group meeting. The large size of some labs results in an annual or semi-annual group meeting presentation. On the other hand, smaller labs often prefer to run more of a round-table format where all members share their results or problems each week. Visit 10 different labs and you’ll probably find as many variations on their group meeting structures.
While PIs will argue – correctly – that group meetings provide an opportunity to practice giving seminars, communicating research and receiving constructive criticism, students generally see them as a time-consuming nuisance that seems to come around too frequently. But, unlike Congress, surely we can compromise. There must be a number of talks that would provide us with the needed practice and preparation, while not wasting too much of our time in unnecessary preparation.
Should we find consensus on the “correct” number of group meeting seminars to give each year, perhaps labs would be willing to modify their group meeting structure to accommodate the results. We can all agree that requiring a daily group meeting seminar from each lab member would be a bit over the top – so hopefully the resulting data would convince any labs employing this schedule to move the meeting to a less frequent timetable.
What do you think? At what point does giving group meeting become more of a burden than a benefit?
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@chrisadieni
wrote on July 25, 2011 at 2:10 pm
I voted "Never – they're way more stress than they're worth." Never had a group meeting- not a single one- in grad school. Got through just fine. They started as of my postdoc and I find them to be more counter-productive than anything.
alan@benchfly
wrote on July 25, 2011 at 3:05 pm
I voted for "3-4". Although they can be a pain in the a–, I think there is a lot of value in having to step back from the data a few times a year and present a cohesive story. It's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees in research. And even if nobody has any interesting ideas to contribute during the meeting, just getting comfortable standing in front of people and talking clearly about your project is beneficial I think. Of course, that's not to say I haven't sat through A LOT of meetings where the time would have been better spent working out pi to the 1000th digit…
FLOSciences
wrote on July 25, 2011 at 9:41 pm
I voted 1-2 since I have formal presentations around 5 times a year, which is a bit of an overkill. We have college-wide (~120 students) presentations about once a years, and department-wide (~40 students) presentations every three months. Luckily my PI realized this was plenty and our lab meetings are more informal weekly affairs to discuss lab issues, upcoming lab shutdowns or events, etc.
On the flip side, "never" is too extreme. You DO learn from those talks. You can tell who's never done a talk before. Most people need to practice giving a "big talk" like that. You might "get through" but you'll be a much better speaker with practice.
@chrisadieni
wrote on July 27, 2011 at 3:54 pm
I guess it really is very subjective.
Lemon
wrote on July 27, 2011 at 5:40 pm
My group meetings was and is totally disastrous all the way. Every friday from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM is generally. Everybody has to present and send slides to his email thereafter. My PI generally argues about everything for hours. No inputs from anyone. I do all of my work without help from others. Thats why i voted 3-4 times. so that i get practice for seminar presentations.
CK_Spectroscopist
wrote on November 16, 2011 at 2:01 pm
The truth is that it is subjective because every "student" needs differing amounts of practice to become proficient at any task, whether that be finding eigenvalues or giving a seminar. In my old group, our rotating schedule put you up front 2-3 times per year. This practice was absolutely critical to learning how to give a good talk. However, we also had weekly "mini-meetings" where 3 or 4 of us from similar projects would meet with the PI and discuss current issues and directions with the research. I think this was very effective.