Honors Storytelling in the Sciences Reflection

This has been an enjoyable course in terms of the unique topic and the structure.
Getting the chance to practice and learn about something as specific as making and giving
presentations is rare, so I appreciate the opportunity created by this Honors course. The more
relaxed grading structure was a breath of fresh air and made working on the assignments a fun
opportunity rather than a stressful task. Sometimes having to attend an in person class can be
frustrating during busy weeks, but our engaging and lighthearted class environment was always
something to look forward to. Also, I loved being able to see everyone’s presentations since it
was fun to see the range of topics and learn about what people were passionate about.
Before this class, I had always been intentional with the visual aspects of slide design,
however, I had never put much thought into the framework of the content. The storytelling skills
we learned were really insightful and useful for the presentations. I particularly enjoyed the ABT
(and-but-therefore) and the four storytelling elements (setup, inciting incident, development,
resolution) structures. Normally, I practice presentations for a long time in order to remember all
the content, but when using these structures for our two class presentations I was able to
remember everything much faster and more easily. I have always been a big reader so I
realized that adding the storytelling aspect into content that could be considered boring was a
smart idea.
I definitely see myself using these skills in the future. In my career path I don’t see
myself giving too many presentations, but definitely some occasional ones where storytelling
structures could be used. For example, in my past internship, I had to present what I worked on
for the summer to the team, which included any struggles and goals. This type of presentation
seems like the perfect place to use the four storytelling elements. I also plan to continue being a
TA for the next two quarters, so I’ll make sure to keep these concepts in the back of my mind in
case an opportunity arises to use them. For example, I definitely can see the half-life activity for
condensing explanations to the most important points being useful when explaining content to
students.