By now my beloved summer interns have been gone for a couple days, so the dust is settling and I finally have the time and energy to recap our final days together. It felt like about 4 days worth of work happened in those last two days, hence why I haven't had a chance to sit down and put it all into words, and why I felt so drained until now. This is going to take a few blog posts, so I'll begin with Part 1...
The entire day Thursday was spent going through dry runs of everyone's final presentations. We encouraged all of the interns to be there the whole time so that they might benefit from hearing some of the advice and constructive criticism doled out to their peers. While this seemed like a good idea to us veterans used to these sorts of abuse, it came as a shock to many of the interns who were suddenly facing a hard reality that, oh crap, this is going to be taken seriously! I don't know why that came as such a surprise... You have been performing research on a college campus all summer, like you think you're not going to be held to some responsibilities that come with that? Many of the interns seem to forget that we're not merely giving them our work to do and paying them for it out of the kindness of our hearts... The point of the whole program is to give them real experience and to learn important lessons. This summer is meant to be a time of growth and learning, not just about Imaging Science but learning about performing real research, dealing with 40 hour/week schedules, behaving like an adult, working in teams, experiencing the rigor of college, and most importantly, learning more about themselves. I know several of our interns get that, but there are also times that it becomes blatantly obvious that many of them don't. And to me, the argument of "I'm only a high school intern" does not cut it, because you were chosen for this program because you represent some of the best of the best, and let's face it, in one year you'll be going off to college where this level of work will be regularly expected of you...
Anyways, I got off on a bit of a tangent there, sorry about that. Long story short, most of the interns were shocked and scared (check out their blogs, and you'll see). One intern had a straight up meltdown just from seeing how the other interns did and what feedback resulted (that was a fun new experience for me to try and make better...). Honestly, though, the feedback was NOT that harsh. Graphs were mislabeled or missing units or poorly scaled, data were included that didn't support any hypotheses or illustrate any points, works were not cited, images were not viewable, conclusions and/or background information were omitted... And this doesn't even cover powerpoint basics like, "Don't use too much text," or, "Don't read aloud what your slide says," or even, "Check your grammar"... Overall, really, it was a mess. Out of the 13 who practiced, I think there were only 3 or so that didn't receive any of the tougher constructive criticism (in fact they were practically in another league - those that did well hit it right out of the park). I know it hurts, but, sorry. None of what was said was overly harsh or undeserved. Now I think we must have some understanding for how Simon Cowell must feel (though I think he lacks any sympathy whatsoever).
Anyways, that was my entire afternoon right up until quittin time, except (much like the interns who then had lots of edits to make on their presentations) I had several hours worth of more work to do before the final presentations, which I ended up doing all night at home. Not to mention I was receiving last minute edited powerpoints all night long. Got to rally to make it to the finish line...
In retrospect, despite our constant reminders to work on their final presentations, it seems that most of the interns had to really struggle to get through their dry runs, and then had a lot of work to scramble around doing at the last minute before the final day. Part of me feels bad, and thinks that we should do more along the way - maybe do a half-way mini presentation, or require that stages of presentations be submitted every couple of weeks to ensure everyone is making progress. But at the same time, I don't feel any sympathy - we told them all summer long what to expect, plus we made initial presentations due a week ahead of time, so really there's no excuse. Background data and scope slides can be completed within 1 or 2 weeks of starting; experimental, weeks 3 and 4; data, weeks 5 and 6; and conclusions and future work can be put together in the final week leading up to the presentation.
I suppose that we could lay out deadlines that require those parts be completed according to that schedule, but I don't really want to hold the interns' hands like that. They are on the verge of becoming college students, and they should be given more responsibilities and higher expectations. Scheduling and time management are important parts of that and things they need to learn how to do themselves without a recipe. But I could probably be convinced to change the dry runs to Wednesday next year, so that the interns have another day to make their edits instead of scrambling at the 11th hour (though on the other side of that coin, they should have been better prepared for the dry runs to begin with, and not needed that much extra time). I might also put some consideration into mid-way mini presentations, since that simultaneously presents an opportunity for the interns to learn more about what's going on in each other's labs.... Although that's yet another thing we encouraged them to do on their own all summer long, too.
Stay tuned - Intern Final Moments, Part 2 is up next...
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