The Faculty of Arts hosted its third annual 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) heat on March 12 with 15 graduate students competing in a tight race. A strong advocate for 3MT, Dean Douglas Peers likened the calibre of research presented by Arts students to the 3MT National Competition last year where he was a judge.
“The entire event is immediately useful. Sitting down and distilling your thesis to an elevator pitch really helped me conceptualize the fundamentals of my dissertation,” says Joseph Buscem. “It's also valuable to get more practice speaking off-page in front of people, especially for those of us interested in teaching. Usually, I'm not used to having all eyes in a room on me unless I broke something expensive, so this was a terrific experience.”
“You end up digging deeper into your own understanding of your research while also stepping out of it to imagine how a third party would understand your work,” explains Yourie Kim. “After the presentation, you notice just from regular conversations with friends and family that you have become more attuned to how you’re explaining your work and your research. You learn from the 3MT that presentations are not about you, they're about the audience.”