Extra Credit: UC Grand Slam Takeaways

For this extra credit assignment, I watched the UC Grand Slam and took notes on a few important takeaways. This event had ten UC PhD students share their biggest discoveries and research in engaging and understandable ways, in just three minutes! The judges scored them to get winners, and there was a people's choice winner as well.

What I Learned

I learned lots of different facts about a great variety of things from watching these presentations. One prominent thing that I learned was from the very first presentation, by UCLA student Melis Cakar, pictured left. Through her research, she discovered that the cerebellum works differently in people with autism, than with people who don't have autism. She found that the cerebellum not only performs motor functions, but it has roles in language, social behavior, and sensory information. I thought that it was so important to learn about this discovery with autism that I had to share.

Another amazing fact I learned came from UC Berkeley student Victoria Chevy, pictured to the right. She discovered that although it is hard for bacteria to get from the gut to the brain, once it gets there it will quickly multiply and spread. This was very fascinating to me, and I enjoyed learning about bacteria during this presentation.

Takeaways For My Own Writing

These students found ways to teach the audience extensive research that they had been conducting for years, in just a mere 3 minutes. Many did so by engaging the audience right at the start by either telling a descriptive story or by using a nifty saying that caught the listeners attention. To illustrate, UCSC student Natalie Pedicino started off by stating: "Everybody poops". Everyone was expecting some type of intense research from the presentations, but Natalie started off so lightheartedly that she really caught my attention.

The presentations taught me the great importance of engaging the audience in crafty ways, either by using narrative and vivid stories that relate to my audience, or by having a few nifty sayings that are also humorous.

Who I'd Vote For

My favorite presentation that I listened to was definitely by UCSB student Kacie Ring. She was the most engaging presenter for me out of all of these researchers. She made sure to let the audience know why her research was important for us to understand right in the beginning, so I felt more compelled to listen intently.

Additionally, she included lots of humor that made the research not only more engaging, but more understandable too. Below is a picture of one of her slides, where she showed "super bad rats", who carry diseases with them to humans!