Practice makes perfect: a 3MT journey

This time last year, Katrina Jan, a PGR in the Department of English Literature, took part in the UoB 3MT competition and she shares her experience here. There’s still time to sign up if you’re interested in participating in 2024 – sign up here before 28 March.

Last year, I decided to challenge myself and throw myself to the lions by participating in 3MT. I went through many emotions whilst participating in the competition. From, “What am I doing?!” to “I can’t do this”, and then “Okay, maybe I can sort of do this”, “Oh no, definitely shouldn’t have signed up for this” and “Right, I’m doing this and I’m going to give it my best shot” and I’m so very glad I did.

The 3MT contest was a journey and a challenging one for me, especially with all my other commitments. I had just started a new research project on top of my current job at the University and alongside my role as a University Graduate School scholar, as well as the PhD itself and all my other extracurriculars, to say I was busy would be an understatement. To top it off I was battling a cold and a mouth ulcer by the time the 3MT practice heats had started, I was not feeling my best and barely had time to prepare.

Katrina’s 3MT performance in the finals

My first practice was not great, and I would probably go as far as to say that was probably one of the worst presentations I’ve given. A painful mouth ulcer and a stuttering performance with a judging panel staring at me, were not what I envisioned when I first signed up. However, the feedback I received from the judges was encouraging yet critical and helped spur me on for my next heat.

By the time my next practice heat came, I was cured, and had a little more rehearsal but by no means had I put enough time into it as I would have liked. Except I realised the night before, that this was in fact NOT A PRACTICE. It was the elimination stage. I wasn’t even off-script and although I was not ill this time, I was ill-prepared.

How I managed to get off-script for the next day is beyond me. I’m dyslexic and therefore my short-term memory is not great, so forgetting words is my speciality. However, my BA is in Drama and English, and my background prior was in Theatre and Performance, and whilst it had been nearly a decade since I had done a show, I tried to think of this as a performance.

I wrote my 3MT speech like a script and took out any jargon.

1. So, it would be easy to remember
2. A non-specialist audience could grasp what I was saying
3. See first point

This time I would be presenting at the 3MT Heats mouth-ulcer-free but sleep deprived. Nervous? Most definitely! The nice part? So is everyone else. The other contestants (although far less clumsy and more prepared than I) were so lovely and encouraging, that not for a second did I feel like we were competing against each other. Everyone gave genuinely positive feedback and the advice I was given from another contestant was:

• Practise
• Practise
• Practise

Once I had (by some miracle) got through to the Final, that’s exactly what I did.

I practised with the other contestants, PhD colleagues, to random undergraduates who wouldn’t leave the lecture hall and to the security guard who tried to kick me out of the lecture hall, and this made a huge difference to the way I presented. I didn’t expect to be runner-up against such brilliant contestants (some even became close friends), but if I somehow managed to pull this off, so can you.

The Piscopia Initiative: inspiring inclusion in Maths

Ahead of International Women’s Day on Friday 8 March, Rosie Evans, a PGR in Maths shares the work that she does with The Piscopia Initiative.

Only 26% of doctorate mathematical sciences graduates are female, and this falls further to 11% of mathematical sciences professors. The Piscopia Initiative is an international network of women and underrepresented genders in mathematical research with two key aims:

• To support current women and underrepresented genders in PhD study in mathematics and create a community where they feel heard and understood.
• To encourage more undergraduates to consider further study in mathematics.

Three PhD students (Isabella, Tiffany, and Mary) at the University of Edinburgh started Piscopia in 2019 to tackle this gender gap that we see in mathematical research. I started up the Birmingham Piscopia node in 2021 in the first year of my PhD when Tiffany got in touch. At the end of 2022 I became a national co-lead and I am now responsible for coordinating some of our 19 committees across the UK and one in the US.

PiFORUM23 participants at the University of Birmingham in September 2023

Our local committees run events such as mentorship schemes, social sports, and application helpdesks for students to get advice on PhD applications. Nationally, we host a monthly, online seminar series called PiWORKS and run an annual in-person event called PiFORUM. We also have several online advice series on our social media pages including “Mathematician of the Month”, which celebrates the recent achievements of a nominated women or person from an underrepresented gender.

International Women’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women and underrepresented genders within our community. Piscopia are hosting ten events across the UK simultaneously on Friday 8^th March to celebrate International Women’s Day this year. Our Edinburgh committee are going to be making signs and going on the IWD march, in Newcastle there will be a bake sale in aid of a Kenyan outreach programme that encourages and supports Kenyan girls to pursue education in STEM, and lots of our other committees are hosting coffee & cake (York, St Andrews, Bath, Glasgow & Strathclyde, Leicester) with a poster carousel of work done by women and underrepresented genders in Maths. Here in Brum we are going to be hosting a PhD showcase on the Physics Bridge in Watson. After a successful showcase in 2023, we have decided to run the same event this year, hopefully even bigger! We’ve asked postgraduates in maths to make a poster that communicates their research in a way that is accessible for undergraduates. This includes talking about the best and worst parts of PhD study for them and the sorts of skills that they learnt when they were undergraduate that they are using now. This event is open to anyone but is particularly aimed at women and underrepresented genders. The goal is to break the barrier between postgraduates and undergraduates and initiate conversations that would otherwise not happen organically. We also want to inspire the students by showing them the huge variety of topics that we as postgraduates research – each PhD and therefore each PhD student is unique.

None of the events we run here in Birmingham would be possible without our committee members as well as the staff in Maths. Sara Jabbari and Olga Maleva have supported us at every stage, particularly with their advice from their experience supporting underrepresented groups in Mathematics. We’d love you to get in touch if you’d like to be involved.