Speaking Beyond the Ivory Tower
If you have ever tried to explain your work to your grandma and been met with a blank stare, this station might be for you.
Learning how to describe your work in a way that people understands is tricky. You don’t want to talk down to anyone, but you're so far in the hole that it’s hard to know other people’s frame of reference. On top of that, you want it to sound interesting, especially when they ask how it helps people or how it makes money.
So how do you translate years of specialized research to someone who doesn't share your background? How do you convey your value when your CV reads like a foreign language to many employers?
As you update your committee, it becomes more apparent how important storytelling becomes. The overarching narrative of your work, crossing from the unsolved problem to the researched solution, brings an understandable arc to your work and delivers an emotional draw.
This station is about bridging worlds through communication, to create that story. We'll break down how to shape the details of your work into bigger picture narrative. You'll learn to extract the universal skills embedded in your research experience and present them in ways that showcase your creativity, effort, and promise.
By the end, you'll be able to demonstrate immediate value, whether you're writing a resume, interviewing for a job, or explaining your work to family members at Thanksgiving.