Don’t know about you, but I noticed a trend at technical conferences.

A poor grad student standing in front of an audience, is hanging on for his dear life to the podium while giving a presentation on “Molecular Capabilities of the T3H15C200Rn100 in the Capacity of Potential Implementation in  Electrical Conductivity” or something along those lines… You can barely make out what he is saying, buckets of sweat are dripping from his shaking fingers - you can actually reach out and touch the tension emanating from that poor soul! Finally he is finished - you can actually see the relief, like a giant mountain, sliding of his chest.  That is until the session chair announces: “Does anyone have questions for the presenter?”

Unavoidably, in every large technical conference I’ve ever attended, there is a group of professors who consider themselves to be VERY BIG DEALS. These professors have a FAVORITE saying during Q&A sessions. They especially love to use it on the nervous grad students. In fact the more uncomfortable and nervous the poor student looks, the more likely he is to elicit the favorite BIG DEAL response:

“I would just like to make a statement.”

(This is supposed to be Q&A, but the BIG DEAL professors don’t need to ask questions, just make statements, because they’re brilliant)

“I would NOT make such conclusions, based on this type of data, as this [miserable, obtuse, excuse for a] presenter just showed. In fact,  as I said in Chapter 7 of my VERY IMPORTANT book, I know about how I think, I know how I do things and you are wrong, but I am very smart. I know because I just know!”

OK, granted, I paraphrased but the general meaning is the same. So, just to get it off my chest - the above example is NOT a question. Thus, it would be nice not to hear it during Q&A sections of technical talks.

Cheers!

Masha