5 reasons to talk to 5-year-olds about your job
Looking for a fun quarantine challenge? Here is one!
I recently participated in SkypeAScientist with seventy kindergarteners from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.While signing up, I pictured an audience of college or at least high school students. But then this is what I find waiting in my inbox instead.
What can one tell kindergartners about the brain except that they have one? Do I bring in neurons? Do I talk about predictions, and what is meta cognition really?
But it was around the new year and I was feeling ready for a challenge — so I said yes. It was daunting — but rewarding!
And lucky for me, these are the best 5 things that this experience taught me –
- Kindergartners are probably the only audience that will howl with laughter at your jokes.
As a run of the mill academic, I had a stack of dry, neat slides with text only. Until someone wise, rightly advised me to include pictures.
“Think of the 70th kid in the back row who doesn’t want to be there”.
Disgruntled, this was the change incorporated into my opening pun. The moment baby Rambo propped up on the screen. Kids went berserk with laughter. It inconvenienced their teacher, but did the kids pay attention after this? You, bet.
#lesson1 - always think about the kid who doesn’t want to listen to you.
2. How to be brief and the importance of it.
Kids lose interest really fast, hence time and timing is key. If you think elevator pitchers are hard, try tailoring your content to kindergartners. It was the best practice session on brevity ever.
#lesson2 — assume your audience is as distracted as kindergartners.
3. Never underestimate your audience — even if they are five.
Years in science has taught me that everyone assumes that insects are extremely simple brainless creatures. But my audience of five-year-olds did not assume that. I was impressed, but I certainly lost some shock value and pizzazz from my presentation there.
#lesson3 — the audience is always smart, maybe less informed, but smart.
4. You can be lucid without using big words like “lucid”.
Talking to kids, forces you to distill things into the simplest, most relatable building blocks. You revisit fundamentals and question jargons that are “gold-standard” in your field.
Words often shape the way we think. Questioning the term sometimes helps us discover better ways of doing things.
#lesson4 — “Floccinaucinihilipilification” or something more pronounceable?
5. Shows us the beautiful parts of our own jobs.
I love doing science! I love reading science! I love talking about science! But Burnout at lab, depression and desperation is real.
Seeing tiny faces gasp with wonder really helped. Try it. This might just be the antidote that you have been looking for in these COVID days.
Thanks for reading this. If you are a scientist feeling inspired please check out https://www.skypeascientist.com/ now. Inspiration doesn’t last long, check it now! SkypeAscientist does not require you to have a presentation you can simply chat with the participants and answer their questions as well. And you can use platforms other than Skype too.
If you are person wondering how to get started please feel free to use this handy guide about brains and insect behavior for kindergartners.
Thank you for enjoying this article this far. Hate it? Love it? Please let me know, any feedback helps me grow.
I would greatly appreciate if you could share this or comment here :)
