Goal 3.2 | Diego Sifuentes e-Portfolio Site

I will discussing my growth in my time here at Longwood University on effectively communicating orally in multiple contexts. The first context we will discussing is poster presentations. During the Longwood Showcase this year I had 5 projects in total that I had to present three posters and two oral presentations. One of the posters that I had to present was a poster that I did about protein- protein interactions and how I had to tag the protein in order to see an interaction, using a synthetic biology approach. I was super proud of my work since it was an independent research that I had to do in BIOL 494. I will say the people that came to my poster were people in many different disciplines. For example, Dr. Beech an expert in what I was presenting came over and I had to be very specific jargon and I had a lot of pressure on me compared to when a math professor came over and I had to present my presentation in a little less jargon. I also had a mixture of both words come over when Dr. Franssen a Biology professor came over, although he is an expert in biology, his expertise comes in Evolution and Developmental Biology. This made it a little less nerve reckoning. In BIOL 488, I presented a powerpoint at the showcase on climate change and how soil and water conservation methods could help Longwood University stay a head of the curve when it comes to future problems that climate change might bring. One thing that I was very confident about was my charisma and jokes in order to persuade some people into thinking that these conservation methods should be in place. However I had one student think that we could do this because it would “take away people’s freedom” and “become a money grab scheme”. This is when I realized that not everyone in the room is a Biology major so I had to explain it to him from another discipline point a view. I would think that everyone would want to save the plant at any cost but I forgot that some people do not think that way. In my class presentations I also feel like I have to do both especially the way Dr. Barber likes it done. Dr. Barber made us make our own therapeutic approach on a disease that we select and present it to the class and the class had to vote if we would invest or not invest in it. This means that I did not just have to please her but I also had to please the class. My therapeutic approach was called A.M.B.L.E.N. This had to do with using nanotechnology and nanomedicine approach to go to cancer cell and present the MHC class 1 molecules a peptide that they can present to the T cells in order to activate the destruction of cancer cells. I had to not only use correct jargon for the professor but also very persuasive for the students. Overall, I will be taking all these skills with me because in the future I would like to work as a medical liaison and I need to be able to communicate with people in many different contexts so this was great practice for a job I want to do in the future.