Thursday, September 11, 2008

The dilemma of presenting original work

While discussing a job candidate the other day, VRS mentioned that I shouldn't be presenting original work. In reference to the job candidate, VRS said, "he doesn't present new things, it's already published!"

Unfortunately, I'm hoping to present a small part of my (definitely unpublished) masters thesis, a work in progress at next year's AAG in Las Vegas.

I really don't know if I should be doing that. Granted, the event is not really for serious academic discussion, more for networking and catching up. But still, who knows who is listening out and taking your ideas. sigh.

In the SEAGA conference in May, again I presented my HT which is yet unpublished. I threw in all the good stuff in there. Call me a newbie but I should be more careful about these things but how? How much should I present and how much not to? I'm also trying to attract potential supervisors, phd programs or jobs or whatever so then I don't want to sound like an idiot either. Then how?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hunh? Seems to me that the goal of presenting original work *in progress* is to get feedback and work on it before eventually publishing it. But that said, it seems that most unis now want to turn their faculty and research students into little publishing machines.

I know other people who don't want to present their work because they fear that it will be stolen. Silly stuff.

Monkey said...

well i agree that the whole reason why i want to present is because i want to get feedback! but how to decide what to say and what to "keep" ... it IS so silly that i dun know whats the "right" thing to do...

so i should just ignore and say everything?