Over on Dynamic Ecology, Jeremy Fox wrote a quick post about reading out from a script while delivering an academic presentation, after he saw my recent talk in which I did so, at the University of Calgary Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Departmental Seminar (thanks for the invitation!).
I’ve only recently started reading my talks from scripts. As I grow older, develop better work habits and work-life balance, and heal my brain away from old coping mechanisms, I find that my mental capacities and tolerances have changed quite a bit. And one thing I have little ability or desire to do any more is practice a talk enough that my delivery is impeccable. But I still have high standards for myself! So I now read from a script—all of the aspirations towards impeccable delivery, none of the memorization! I spend a lot of time writing the script, but I love writing so it’s more fun, and easier, than practicing a talk endlessly. Even before my brain and priorities changed, I HATED practicing talks (but I did it anyway). I had mostly made my peace with this new practice of reading, which is very uncommon in the sciences, when Jeremy and I chatted about it.
And then, this delightful thing happened! All because I wrote a script for my talk! I gave the same talk again a week later, and a senior academic, who I’d been emailing a bit before the talk and had a chance to meet during my virtual visit, said that they regretted not having written down some of the things I had said. Aha! I said, I can just send you my script! So I did. A presumptuous move, to be sure, for who has the time to read the twelve-page script of the talk they just heard? But I figured they could skim it to find the bits they liked, just for fun.
But what happened next is quite possible the kindest thing I’ve experienced in academia, or at least is in my top five kind academic moments. This senior academic went through my whole script, found all the lines they liked, excerpted them, AND wrote a sentence or two about each excerpt describing why they liked it! What a generosity.
So I’m glad I did the thing that works for me—reading my talk from a script—and grateful for the kindness that grew from it.
I think a lot about the opportunities we have, and those we seize, for being kind. I aspire to live a kind life, and in my work, one place I try to be consistently kind is when offering edits on others’ writing. I do my best to note the sentences I’m enthusiastic about, and I love when people are touched by my enthusiasm. I love when people do the same for me. Good feeling propagates itself when shared, if you will.
Outside of work, I’m building myself a life in which most of the relationships and communities I commit to are kind. I’ve commented, for example, on the deeply humane culture built by the folks I work alongside in our union, UAW5810. So it’s become jarring to remember that academia, in contrast, isn’t built to be kind, that many opportunities to be kind are not seized as they could be, and that making these moments of kindness within our workplace is a practice that isn’t always easy. Thankfully, we can learn.
Ambika Kamath 
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