Illustration Stijn Schreven A failed experiment, a rejected article: in academia such things tend to be labelled failures. As for talking about it? Not done! But in this feature, WUR co-workers do just that. Because failure can be useful. This time we hear from Sam Hoogaars, a PhD researcher in Systems and Synthetic Biology.
‘I started on my PhD research just under a year ago. In the first few months I delved into the literature to find my own approach to the project. I decided to set up a system in which two bacteria support each other: one of them captures oxygen, which is toxic for the other one. Four months later, my project proposal was ready and I was invited to present it to my 10 colleagues. ‘No problem,’ I thought.
‘I started with an introduction about sustainability and the circular economy. Everyone looked interested. When I switched to my research question about bacteria, I saw people’s eyebrows slowly furrowing. I began to doubt myself: wasn’t I making myself clear? But I just carried on. The brows dropped into deep frowns. It seemed I had skipped stages in my thinking process and was talking about things I hadn’t introduced. I felt terrible. These were people I looked up to and I wanted to enthuse them about my subject. One person began to fiddle with his phone. The feeling ‘this isn’t going well’ turned into ‘I’ve failed, please let this be over.’ I rushed through the rest of my story, therefore skipping important parts of it and only making matters worse.
When I switched to my research questions, I saw brows slowly furrowing
‘My supervisor had offered beforehand to go through the slides together, but I hadn’t thought that was necessary. After this fiasco, I did do so with a teacher from the group. She gave me some useful tips and advised me to use the main message as the heading in the slides. Last month I got a second chance to present my proposal, this time for a bigger group. Thanks to the tips, it went a lot better. There were still a few frowns, but I tried not to let myself be distracted by them. Not everyone will understand everything. Since this experience I try to keep as many people as possible with me in the time I’ve got.’
