{"id":7508,"date":"2015-04-21T16:29:44","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T16:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/?p=7508"},"modified":"2015-04-25T16:54:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-25T16:54:12","slug":"cultnet-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/?p=7508","title":{"rendered":"Cultnet Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our Manchester \u2018Cultgroup\u2019 (Richard, Khwan, Susan, Miri, Miriam and me) had presented in the 18<sup>th<\/sup> Cultnet seminar at Durham University. I found it was very beneficial to hear other researchers\u2019 studies in the same field as well as receive wonderful insights from them. Below, I would like to share some of my reflections of learning from this supportive environment.<\/p>\n<p>It was an exciting experience for me to practice thinking towards the audience. My audiences were a group of academician interested in the intercultural studies. Many of them were very experienced researchers who are keen on listening to the inter-related ideas in the field, but might not so much on a descriptive, sequential report of a student\u2019s personal study. So I chose to only present 3 main features of my study:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An interesting context (i.e. students as culturally-unique individuals, and as active-thinking agents in the internationalised UK HE)<\/li>\n<li>An interesting theoretical lens (i.e. mindfulness)<\/li>\n<li>An interesting method (i.e. visual narratives or creative-arts)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Khwan also gave me an advice that it\u2019s better to say that these 3 features are interesting to me for the reasons that I will explain later in the presentation; and then, be open to hope the audience may also find them to be interesting.\u00a0 From her suggestion, I learnt to articulate my study with a passionate subjective-voice as well as with respect to the audience.<\/p>\n<p>Anxiety \u2018taming\u2019 was another thing that I had been trying to learn in the Cultnet experience. First, I want to say that, unlike some naturally bold public-speakers, I usually feel nervous when I need to present in front of people, especially a group of experienced professors. Such emotional experience might sound familiar to many of you &#8211; which could be quite disturbing when you try to deliver a good talk in public. So I would like to share several points of my personal experiences that how I have .. at least, ATTEMPTED to tame my anxious feelings before and during the presentation.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Understanding Anxiety 1: what am I anxious and nervous about?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Disappointing myself: forgetting the words that I need to say?<\/li>\n<li>Disappointing others: standing alone in front of a group of intensive \u2018inspection gaze\u2019?<\/li>\n<li>Disappointing the Mancunian \u2018Cultgroup\u2019 who has been very supportive to me?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8230; Drama: getting fainted on the stage with a bleeding nose caused by high-pressure? \ud83d\ude42<span style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/fiant-bleed.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-7509\" src=\"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/fiant-bleed.gif\" alt=\"fiant bleed\" width=\"138\" height=\"138\" \/><\/a>\u2026 OH, NO..<\/p>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong>Accepting Anxiety:<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>When anxiety is inside of me, it\u2019s very difficult to either clear it out or control it. But I find it might be easier to try to accept it after understanding what I am nervous about. When I accept it, it is not in a conflict relation with me but becomes a part of me.. \u00a0(a part of me which makes me feel awful though). But such alteration of the relation may help one feel a bit less intense because you are no longer fighting against your emotion but trying to understand it. So what\u2019s next?<\/p>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><strong>Understanding Anxiety 2: what could anxiety bring to me in the current situation?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Physical Health? No.<\/li>\n<li>Psychological well-being? No.<\/li>\n<li>A good impression? No. I sometimes remind myself what I think and feel when I saw a speaker over-stressed\u2026<\/li>\n<li>A good quality of presentation? No. Anxiety will only ruin my work,\u00a0no matter how good or interesting the content\u00a0is supposed to be.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ok. We know it\u2019s bad and useless to be nervous, so what?<\/p>\n<p>What I do is to keep telling myself that I\u2019m spending my energy on a very useless and temporary thing \u2013 being nervous. I feel that, when I consciously remind myself of this awareness, I start to be a bit calm every time.<\/p>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li><strong>Surrounding Dynamics: <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The intrapersonal emotion-taming might only work to certain extent. So I sometimes also borrow &#8216;power&#8217; from the external resources:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Supportive voices: reading supportive messages from friends? Reminding supportive advices from colleagues and supervisors?<\/li>\n<li>Distractive sources: listening to other presenters\u2019 insightful talks to distract myself from the temporary emotions? Also, don\u2019t forget to appreciate small but lovable things available through my eyes?<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Casual\u2019 mediation: focus on my breath and empty the mind\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The last important learning-experience that I want share is to talk slowly and clearly because \u2018<strong>your ideas are worth being heard<\/strong>\u2019. \u00a0Teaching, or presenting, is a delivery of communication. If my students or audiences cannot clearly hear and understand what I say, there is, then, no use of saying it. This is what I understood from Richard\u2019s advice + many times of reminding myself to speak sloooooowwwly. I tried to\u00a0consciously\u00a0self-monitor my speed of\u00a0utterance\u00a0so that I could hopefully leave some clearer footprints in the audiences&#8217; minds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/snail-foot-print.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7510 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/snail-foot-print-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\u8717\u725b\u8db3\u8ff9\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/snail-foot-print-300x224.jpg 300w, http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/snail-foot-print.jpg 587w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our Manchester \u2018Cultgroup\u2019 (Richard, Khwan, Susan, Miri, Miriam and me) had presented in the 18th Cultnet seminar at Durham University. I found it was very beneficial to hear other researchers\u2019 studies in the same field as well as receive wonderful insights from them. Below, I would like to share some of my reflections of learning from this supportive environment. It [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections-inon-researcher-action"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7508"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7562,"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7508\/revisions\/7562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}