One of my pet peeves as a professor is seeing that it is
largely just us professors asking questions after a seminar. It isn’t that the
graduate students don’t have questions: it’s just that they are not inclined to
ask. Here I’d like to address why I think it is important that grad students
speak up for the betterment of their own maturation as an academic and also for
the good of science in general.
As a young student at the University of Michigan we were
regaled with tales of the “good old days” when the systematics world was being
turned on its head by the faculty (e.g., Arnold Kluge, Bill Fink) and
especially the graduate students (e.g., Steve Farris). There was an atmosphere
of scholarship and clear thinking because of the competitive environment among
the young scholars there at the time. I’ve heard from people who
gave talks at Michigan in those days about how scary it was to give a seminar
there back then. If you had any insecurities the question period would really bring
it out. As a graduate student I saw the reputation being upheld and I was proud to be part of it. Students and faculty asked difficult probing questions to get to the
heart of an issue or problem. You might be picturing an angry audience full of
people frothing at the mouth waiting to ask a “gotcha question” that makes the
speaker look like a fool. To the contrary most questions were basically
variations on “why did you do it like this, and not this other way?” or “what
is the basic thing you are trying to discover?”
The result of a department’s
reputation for asking tough questions is usually hearing lots of good talks.
People who gave seminars were better prepared to answer questions and explain
the fundamentals of their research. The American Museum of Natural History is
another place where I also see the audience’s reputation for asking probing
questions change the nature of the style of talks being presented. Seminar
speakers are more nervous before their talk but those that come prepared
generally do well. This environment may not be the best place to present
preliminary work and that is certainly a drawback. Can audience members
sometimes go too far and ask questions that are sometimes aimed more to
embarrass the speaker, unfortunately that too can be the case. (That only
serves to make the person asking the question look like a jerk.) However, in my
opinion it is more respectful to ask a speaker a difficult but fair question
than to ask no question at all. I think it is terribly embarrassing not to be
asked a question during a seminar, both for the speaker and the audience. The
speaker is thinking, “geez, I guess they didn’t get it or they didn’t care” and
the audience might be thinking “damn it, why doesn’t somebody think of
something to ask so we don’t look dumb.” It is the kind of palpable awkward
silence you usually only get during a bad blind date. In my life as an academic
I think I’ve learned more during the question periods of talks than I have
during the talks themselves. That is because the questions and answers can
bring out the fundamentals of what was being said over the entirety of the
talk, and they sometimes reveal what was missing during the prepared speech. A
question can give the speaker a chance to say, “what I meant was….”
So why does a graduate student need to ask questions during
seminars? For one thing it is practice for public speaking. Even though you may
be seated seemingly safely among your peers, everyone is listening to you. You
may only say one sentence, but you are being judged on the quality of that sentence.
(By the way the adage, “There are no stupid questions” may be true, but there
are certainly 'stupidly worded questions.') A good question that reveals
something new to the audience and speaker will highlight your intellect or at
least knowledge of a subject, just as a badly worded question will leave people
wondering what was the last grade of elementary school you completed. Because
of the consequences of asking a good or bad question, it is only natural to get
nervous before asking one. Everyone asks both good and bad questions in their
life but the people who generally ask the best questions have asked the most. I
know I’ve gotten a few collaborations out of projects that were born out of a
question I asked or heard someone ask at a seminar.
Graduate students also need to ask questions because they
need practice thinking on their feet. You don’t generally have much time to
think about how you will be articulating your brief question. The quickest
thinkers often ask the best questions, and thinking quickly comes with
practice. People who ask good questions often give good seminars; they also typically give good
answers to questions. These folks can anticipate the kinds of questions they may be asked. In a graduate school qualifying
exam you will be asked many rapid-fire questions by faculty members with a lot
more experience than you. If you can’t think on your feet, or anticipate what's coming, you will be in big
trouble.
So what if you are just too shy to ask a question. That’s
okay - lots of people are shy and many of those people are now not as shy
because they forced themselves to be a little bit more outgoing. They did so
perhaps by asking a short simple question during seminars until they got more
comfortable with public speaking. I personally broke my shyness by taking notes
during seminars. I write interesting things that I have heard and to try to
formulate a good question to ask. I don’t always ask my question but I always
try to write at least one. These notes and questions generally help me think
about my own research more clearly. It certainly helps me articulate a good
question and synthesize what I’ve learned or didn’t understand.
I’ve heard lots of excuses from graduate students about why
they don’t ask questions: “I don’t want to show-up the speaker,” “I don’t know
enough about the topic,” etc. I never hear “I couldn’t think of anything.” Usually I
hear a great deal of talk about the presentation in little conversations away
from the speaker. “I wonder why she ran that analysis?,” or “that was great, but
I didn’t understand the part about…..”, or “that was awful, doesn’t he know
about statistics?” If you think of a question or didn’t understand something a
speaker says it is disrespectful not to ask something. Private conversations
behind the speaker’s back don’t help anybody. Talking to the speaker privately
after a seminar is fine too, although you do lose the practice of public
speaking and thinking on your feet.
So grad students, go forth and ask some friggin’ question,
for your sake and for the sake of promoting good science.
