Since last week I have been juggling lab work and preparing for some presentations at scientific meetings.
On the one hand this is a bit frustrating because the lab work inevitably gets delayed and I would really like to have more data at this point (especially for the presentations), but on the other hand it is a nice change to spend more time organizing and polishing the work of the last few months in order to have a good presentation.
One advantage is that the academic meetings I will be presenting at can everything can be done in English, which means I can at least relax from trying to memorize the correct way to say things in Japanese and instead just present things in a flexible way.
The only disadvantage is that this is still a relatively new field for me, so I am much more prepared to answer questions related to the techniques and the molecular aspects of my work, but not so much about the intricacies related to the purpose of it (for example how it compares with other approaches used), so I also have to spend more time studying other people's presentations and trying to guess what kind of things would interest the audience enough to be included in the questions.
Well, I still have a few weeks, so I hope I can do well, and if not, there is always the next meeting.