 So really this The impetuous of this talk was they approached me at an Ascrus Ascrus was not getting enough residents coming because Department chairs send their residents to either a AO or Arvo Now if you're doing research it makes sense to go to Arvo, but there's no sense to go to a AO I was worthless for a resident, but you know because department chairs tend to be Retina people and you know their ophthalmologists and all they just don't send residents to ask us and so We we made it so that it's free to go and then we put together a resident fellows program And we tried to make it useful and so it was a half-day program You know we give you breakfast we give you lunch and then you know one of them was you know, how do you? You know fill out the forms. How do you choose the code numbers? You know they had Kevin Cochran who if you're in practice you have to pay thousands to get him to you know Come and tell you how to run a practice and he gave talks on how to run a practice and then So they asked me to give a talk on okay. How do you present? How do you do public speaking? How do you prepare a talk? How do you? Give a talk and then also they said you know, how do you prepare a paper? And nobody ever talks to residents about that nobody ever sits you down and says okay here's how you give a talk you just kind of wing it and then Watch what everybody else does and then eventually pick it up So I thought I'd put together a little talk on how to you know prepare for public speaking And I mean the first thing and this is obvious, but but you don't know how many people stumble on this know your material I mean before you're going to give a talk you have to know what you're talking about inside and out and You'd be amazed at how many people you ask them a question You know even at residence day We try to be really nice and we ask somebody a question or when the students give these talks especially at grand rounds you ask them a question and and yes, they've memorized what they put in there, but you ask question okay, well, what does this mean here and They're just clueless and so you really need to research what it is that you're going to talk and Anticipate, you know, what are some potential questions and what people could be asking because that's critical to know how to answer them And I've seen it time after time or especially the students when they prepare You know, they you just do a very superficial talk and it's like, you know, we all know what you're presenting We know that stuff already. So, you know, tell us something new So, you know, always look at all the references dig up the background I mean just take the time and you know if you're going to be giving statistics especially review all your stats because people are going to maybe ask you questions Well, wait a minute this group did this this group did that did you look at it in this way or that way? So preparation is just critical. You really got to know your material ahead of time You know, the second thing is know your audience and there are different talks that we do and for example If you're talking among your colleagues or I'm talking to you guys, you know, it's a different level So if I'm talking to you guys, I have to really just dumb down the talk to make it so you guys can understand it No, but but know your audience and so every once in a while will be asked to talk to Lay people about, you know, ophthalmology to get him excited about what we're doing on a department here And you don't want to put jargon in there. You don't want to just talk scientifically You want to talk at a level that people can understand and so that's really critical to know your audience I mean, it's different if it's students residents lay people is critical because if you just get up there and say Oh, well, you know, flit 2732 gene is da da da da da and make it a generation People aren't going to have any idea what that means. And so you want to say hey listen Macular degeneration is the most common cause of visual loss now as we age and our society is aging So this is a real problem one of the things we've looked into is is there a connection between genetics and this disease and then you Keep it on a level that people can understand that you don't want to talk down to them So that's always a very fine line because you don't want to be you know condescending or anything like that But you want to put it at a level where people can understand it And I think we have a tendency as doctors to put a lot of jargon in our talks and people don't understand jargon now That that doesn't even just mean when you're talking to lay people. I mean grand rounds two weeks ago You know, we went in and the speaker was talking about all these various diseases that Paul Bernstein was all excited and jumping up About I had no idea what the guy was talking about And so you have to be careful to keep it at a level. No, I know So you have to keep it at a level that that people could understand and so remember not everybody knows Your little field of ophthalmology. So always keep that in mind when you talk to them You know, the second thing is what kind of talk is it, you know, there's different types of talk There's going to be the the scientific presentation where it's very much You guys are too young to remember the old TV show drag net But you know drag net was it was a show where the these two very stiff detectives and Jack Webb's favorite line was you know, they'd be interviewing people about what happened at the crime. You could just the facts ma'am You know, and so it's just the facts ma'am is is a scientific presentation. And so you want to keep it Really focused and on key But there's other types of talk if you're a guest speaker, you know, you're giving a speech somewhere else You know, that's going to be a long talk That may be a 45 minute talk and in that case you're allowed to talk a little bit about where you're from Maybe even show some pictures. I always show a picture of Moran or show picture the mountains in Utah or something And so if you're an invited speaker, that's a that's a different audience You're looking at and if you're a keynote, that's even more so because then you have to thank everybody And you think you know the Academy and you think your parents were having you and all that And so it's a very different talk now the length of the talk is critical and there's several different talks You know the average talk at an Academy or you know Arvo or SCRS is a five to seven minute talk So you really have to be concise and follow the outline You know you want to go ahead and present, you know What you're going to study your materials and methods your results and your you know conclusions And you want to be really brief and to the point, you know If you're given the 20 minute talk, this may be a grand rounds talk or this may be a resident state talk And so this is a little bit different and then lastly as you know the 45 to 60 minute talk This is when you're the keynote or you're the presenter and and you know 45 to 60 minutes is a long time to talk And so you want to keep in mind that you want to pace it just right and you want to not drone And you want to make sure that you keep your audience interested And so if you're giving a longer talk then you can intersperse it with you know scenery slides funny slides things like that You're allowed to do that in a five to seven minute talk. There's just no time so in that talk you have to be very very precise Okay, so that said You know you just you spice it up once in a while see if people are paying attention All right, so the slides are the key now Most people are doing PowerPoint or whatever Apple's PowerPoint is called And so you want to go ahead and you want to follow that format good evening So we're in the middle of talking about how to give a talk and so the first thing when you give a talk is show up on time for the talk That's critical All right, so in terms of the slides, what is the order of slides now again? This kind of goes without saying but you'd be amazed at how many people don't do this And so obviously you want to put on a title and nowadays disclosures are critical You guys don't have to worry about this because you don't have any disclosures But eventually in your careers, you know You're gonna have times where you get funding from various companies or you get grants and things and so Disclosures are critical So you have to have your disclosures on the first of the second slide and you have to acknowledge them now Or people will like kick you out of the meeting next year. I mean, they're very serious about this And so you have to say these are my disclosures none of them apply or you know I have a grant for this particular talk where I receive travel to give this talk That's important. You know you want to do your introduction. What are you talking about? People sometimes can't tell from the title exactly what it is. You want to keep it brief Almost like a synopsis, but you want to kind of introduce what the problem is that you're covering and why you're giving that talk You know materials and methods are critical because you want to say What am I doing? What did I do? And so again, you don't want to bog down in details again depending on the talk It's five to seven minute talk You don't have much time to do this but you want to say okay We looked at a hundred patients group A did this group B did this This is what we did to them and when you're doing the materials and methods, it's okay to put drawings in there It's okay to put little listings in there. That's no problem Results are the crux of your talk So if you're going to give a brief talk you want to save about half the time for your results because that's The gist of your talk and so don't spend so much time doing the introduction that you're already four minutes into seven minute Talk you haven't given you results yet And then just like everything else you do discussion and conclusions and so you want to keep your conclusions succinct Because you want people to walk away and say oh, okay, that's what they did. I get it I understand and so you know your conclusion should be a highlight of Exactly what your what your talk was about All right, so the PowerPoint slides themselves Use bullet points use dashes use dots use bullets. This is not your talk on there People want to listen to you. They don't want to read your slides and and the one thing I found that the people do is they put way too much text on their slides So you don't want to put your whole talk on there Bring notes for you to look at it's okay to do that. That's a I'm getting that It's okay, but but the text on there if people are busy reading what's on there They're not going to listen to what you say so you can expand on what you put on your on your slide But but minimize the text because if you put too much text, it just gets really hard You know photos graphs and tables are really helpful, you know, if you've got you're comparing say two groups It's great to have a graph on there showing you know Here's group A and here's group B and then you put the bars on them Well, look at the difference and so graphs and tables are really helpful, especially if you've got lots of data And so go ahead and use those to summarize things don't put too much information and animation and I have seen people They love computers and so they're playing with them on they've got Flashing back and forth and coming in and out and and that's okay To a small extent, but if you put too much in there again, it overwhelms your audience So, you know, don't put too much just enough now you've heard the saying death by PowerPoint All right, so this is you know, you don't know how many times I see this one you look around the audience and I'll go You know or no nowadays it's different now. They're doing this You know, so everybody's in there doing this so nobody's paying attention And so I mean that's really talked about death by PowerPoint And so be careful what you put in there because you can kill an audience with your PowerPoint now You know when I say don't put too much information and okay, here's an actual PowerPoint slide This is what people use for you know examples. Okay. Now. Can you really read anything out of that slide? I mean, there's there's no way you're gonna be you know Come on. So you put the bullets that highlight it and then you can expand on a little bit Other thing people do font size, you know, you just they play around this font's too big It's too small you try to cram in you know find a font That works for you and that people can read and so think about it Somebody's gonna be sitting in the back there. They need to be able to see what you're putting this So keep it big the other thing that's one of my personal pet peeves is is color and And animation okay, so okay, so here's the animation. All right, so again If there's too much going on it actually doesn't enhance the talk it detracts from the talk And so be careful you don't put too much in there And you know, you don't know how many times you see people who have these Complex charts and graphs and there's just so much data there and of course, what do we all say when we do that? Oh, I'm sorry. This is a very busy slide. How many times have you done that? I mean, I've done that I'm guilty. Well, sorry. This is a busy slide. Well, don't say sorry. This is a busy slide. Don't make a busy slide You know keep it simple, you know, so again too much text too many bullets You know fonts that aren't easy to use people have these scrolled fonts. I mean, that's fine when you're what's that? No, that's fine and I'm gonna insult you guys, but that's fine when you're a seventh-grade girl You want the Curly's get him you put the little circle over the eye, you know And that's okay, but but not for people to read it So, you know, that's the problem and again if you put too many different presentation styles You've got different things in different parts of the talk try to be consistent And then people can actually follow your time now again. Oh, here's this. Well, this is kind of a busy slide I mean, this isn't a busy slide. What is that? It looks like an inkblot test So this is the test for you. Okay, I say, well, I don't know about you guys ever seen inkblots You know that the psychiatrist uses, you know, they're trying to see if you're psychotic or not I thought they looked like MRI scans. So I said, oh look, there's the amygdala Now the the other thing that the people often do is colors and the problem is is If you have a different background like, you know, the red background and then you put some lighter letters People can't see it. So you want to have a good background that people can see and again, you know Don't use the junior high girl font, you know, that just it's just not Not the kind so but but remember I you know, first I thought red looked kind of cool And then I actually sat back at a back of a room and watch somebody give a talk Where was the red there? You couldn't read it So you want to make sure that you use a color and a background that people can read that stands out Now it doesn't mean you have to be blah I mean I said people just do the standard which is white with black letters on it. That's blah You don't have to do that. You can put some stuff in sometimes you can put little mountains on or little sunbursts, you know But the key is like look right here, you know, okay There's little little lines up above and below that sets it off That doesn't detract from the talk that kind of highlights what you want to do So when you're making your slides, you know, be sure to try to keep the talk interesting and again If it's a short talk, you don't have time to do that So just hit the highlights But if it's a longer talk like a residence day talk, you know You're allowed to to splash a little bit in there to keep it to keep it fun and to keep it interesting And the other thing keep it light, you know, you don't have to be to be heavy about it You're allowed to put funny jokes or slides now. There's a fine line Between what you can do because you don't want to insult people and so so that's it and nowadays God medical students now Just getting unbelievable. They're insulted by everything nowadays. It's ridiculous. You can't do anything So, you know, be careful. Don't don't do anything that's considered inappropriate scenery slides You're fine especially because we live in the mountains You're allowed to show your slides hiking or biking or whatever mean those are okay because those help to do it You know, I can show slides of where I'm from and so I'll always show my travel slides and so you can show slides like this But you know and you can make jokes about it. I always make sure to take as you know This is the this is where the Oracle at Delphi was and so this is where I go to get Help to predict how the residents are going to be in the or the next year And so you're definitely allowed to do that and you know, you can talk about things now I always joke about this when I show the medical students This is one of the epsons who guards the Tomb of the unknown show soldier and I mean these guys are unbelievable that it's really competitive to do this and it's interesting The two criteria to be one of these guys is you have to be six feet tall at least and you have to be handsome And so I'm thinking man, that's discriminatory, you know short fat guys are out of it forget it So but the other thing I always say is you have to be very secure in your manhood because you're wearing a skirt white tights and pom-pom on your shoes And a short skirt and so you have to have good legs and so but now I have to be careful because somebody may take that as offensive And so I have to it's really iffy whether you can say those those nowadays now It's funny because I lecture the medical students and I give them a talk on ocular pathology and they cut it in half now So I've got a cram all of ocular pathology in an hour and I don't have much time So I cram a lot in there, but I try to keep it light the medical students this year just skewered me I mean they're saying oh, why are you wasting time showing travel slides? Just show the you know what you need and just these picky nasty comments, and I'm like on I'm like on guys get a life And it gets it gets worse every year, you know 20 years ago the medicines would love putting stuff like that now they're all And the other thing is is I give them a complete outline with all the arrows on there and all the legends underneath And I sent it to them separate lanes. Okay, this is what you need to do And I even tell them at the beginning of the talk now you've gotten a complete outlines got all this stuff in there We're just gonna rapidly go through here and again. I get half a dozen comments Well, there's like no legends on the pictures and they went too fast to see him It's like well read the freaking outline, you know So I was just that's my my peeve now the med students are just they're just all this year's second-year class is awful They really are they're just awful Well, and here's the example I used to show this slide And I thought this was pretty funny I would show them people would laugh and again a few years ago I had several students say what does that mean that you know the faculty thinks they can shit on students And that's all they think about, you know, and that's what they think of students. So I had to cut it out So again be careful what you show because you don't want to insult somebody so Who knows this is insulting All right, so public speaking You cannot prepare enough for your talk and you don't have to totally memorize it But you've got to know your top cold and so, you know, you can practice practice prepare prepare If you don't know that topic cold, you're gonna be in trouble So take the time to know your topic practice with people your fellow residents If you've got a mentor and attending you did research or present it to them and ask them for comments Get your significant other to sit down with you and show it to them and you know, they'll go ahead and Critique you and say, okay, what do you think of this talk time yourself? You know actually get the talk ready ahead of time Prepare it and time it so timing is critical because you don't want to go too short or too long So when you're doing the the talk prep every meeting now has a speaker ready and here like if it's you know resident Day you want to get it to the people at you know audio visual ahead of time but a lot of meetings they'll have a speaker ready room and so People will have their talk on a stick or on a CD or DVD or whatever But you know, you think that it's gonna work But maybe not and so take it to the speaker ready room ahead of time Plug it in and someone will sit down with you and go over it and make sure it really works and make sure all the Videos if you have videos are linked together because there's nothing bigger disaster than getting up to give your talk and your talk doesn't work Especially if you've got like sound effects and other things in there So go to the speaker ready room get it ready work with the staff Because you want that talk to be ready and again, especially if you've got videos You know, you don't know how many times I've been in a talk and gosh a video. Oh, it doesn't work I mean that the video is the gist of what you're trying to show so make sure that it works You know, the other thing is visit the podium prior to your talk You know, and it's okay Maybe you're at a session at Arbo Academy or something and you know, the podium's there Go there before the session starts and you know sneak up to the podium and see what it looks like They put sometimes they'll have a pointer. Sometimes they'll have a clicker They'll have a computer there sometimes and every podium is different. You see where the microphone is And so you don't want to get up there at the last minute and say, oh, where is this? And so take the time ahead of time visit the podium and go up there and do that now You know, look at the ways to advance the slides as I said, is it a clicker down here? Is it a mouse is that it just forward and back slide and Then you know, is there a pointer, you know, do you use the button on the computer to use the pointer? That's really helpful to do that Now once you're at the podium, how do you actually give the talk and you can do it several different ways? When I first started like, you know, you guys are going to be starting now I would take an outline with me to the podium where you would actually have either the PowerPoint there You'd have notes to yourself or something like that And so you can take that with you some people if they did debate in high school You know, they have little cards with them other people have different ways of doing it You can even bring your, you know, laptop or your, you know, MacBook put it up there and do it However, you want to do it is fine, you know after a while when you've done, you know 500 of these things, you don't bring anything with you. You just use the slides to cue you But when you're first starting, I think it's a good idea to do that Or the other thing you can do is, you know When you're in the audience ahead of time and your time is coming up to talk, you know You can have that outline with you and just kind of review it before you go up But the worst thing you want to do is you don't want to be reading from a script Okay, so occasionally you put in a You know, you put in something see if people are paying attention. So All right So the worst thing that I find is the people who read from a script and that's just horrible and all I can think of is Do you ever see Forrest Bueller's day off, you know, Ben Stein, the comedian You know, I mean, yeah, nobody's gonna pay attention when you do that. I don't say how many people at Gina go and You know, don't don't look at what you're reading look at your audience because you've got to engage especially if they're falling asleep So if you're in a smaller room and you look right at somebody they set up They start paying attention and so, you know do that But if you're in a bigger room, you may not be able to see them because the other thing that's gonna be hard is When you're at a big meeting and you're on the podium, they video it So it's not even a lot brighter than that. You can't see anything You just look out and there's just this blackness out there. So don't worry about that You know, have your cues or whatever you want, but don't read from a script Because it's really just just it gives for a bad talk You can change your voice tones a little bit. You can go up. You can go down You can speed up you can slow down, but don't just don't be a liar And and he was at Ben Stein. He was a teacher. I think in the wonder years, too He was like a science teacher and the volcano's go off and it was in the Don't drone. I mean, you know change your voice do your inclination I like to use my slides as a key to what I want to talk about But you have to know your stuff cold when you do that's when you show the slide You know, okay This is the results slide and this is what I want to stress So it's okay to bring little cheat sheets with your outlines. That's no problem You know when you put the bullet points This is what I was talking about with your bullet points put the highlight But then expand on it in your talk and that way people are listening to you Rather than looking at the slides and so use the bullet points as a highlight But expand on it. So again, look at the audience And if you're looking at your notes look up once in a while now I find a good trick pick out a friendly face and if you can see the audience There'll be somebody who's kind of smiling or they're they're nodding Well, you know, I see, you know, Julia's nodding there, you know So look at that friendly face periodically and that helps, you know, get your don't you know If you look at someone in the room Don't do that so so find a friendly face But the problem is is when there's a really bright light out there and you can't make eye contact I tell people do the thousand meter gaze, which is you just you look into the blackness and so Some people get nervous with public speaking now. Everybody's different. It's so funny because you know just being you know Greeks are just people where they don't say oh my god I have to give a talk for ten minutes. They go only ten minutes And so, you know, you give a microphone to a Greek they'll talk for an hour And so I've never had a prompt you say don't you get nervous speaking in public. It's like No But if you do get nervous in public, you know There are some tricks and the first trick is if you don't like looking at people that makes you even more nervous Then what you can do is you can do I call it a thousand meter gaze And so just look beyond the first row out so they think you're looking at them But you just look out into the blackness and that way Sometimes people get a little bit less nervous and so look out into the blackness. I like to make eye contact But if that doesn't work do the thousand meter gaze Now pace yourself You know, don't talk too fast. Don't talk too slow This is where practice comes in because time yourself because you don't want to be Pressured such that you have to talk so fast that people can't understand you But if you talk too slow, you're going to run out of time and so try to pace yourself and try to keep checking yourself And and I've got to admit I am the only time I've ever been nervous And I didn't even realize it as I gave what's called the being course talk And it's the big talk at asterisks and you know, you're there and there's 2,000 people there And then it's the opening session and they introduce you and I got up there and I realized for the first 20 seconds I was talking really fast Unfortunately, I recognized that right away and I said, what are you doing? And so what you do is you give them Take a little breath and then the other, you know 19 minutes and 30 seconds were fine So you just you take a breath sometimes and even before you start sometimes when they're introducing you, that's a good time just a little That's enough to do it and so maybe when they're introducing you go ahead and just take a breath and that really helps You know relax is easy to say now It's just like when you're operating for the first few times, you know We used to joke about taking 10 of Indra or Lee, but now just put a drop of tomoptic under your tongue You know or something. I mean if that's what it takes that's fine You find yourself where your heart rates going up and your blood pressure is going up and you can feel your you know pulse in your neck You know take a drop of you know, tomoptic under your tongue and that's sometimes just enough to take the edge off But but you know, whatever it takes for you to relax, you know Just just do that relaxation All right, so again you can you can put some joke slides in there, so We always keep forgetting when we're in surgery every once in a while people hear everything You know, so you don't want to say oh god. I'm tired today. I didn't get any sleep. I mean don't people hear Everything so be careful. Don't talk about the basketball game last night, which was great by the way But don't don't talk about that and so people hear everything when you're in the O.R. All right, so Enough about talking and so I want to talk a little bit about writing but just to highlight When you're giving a talk, I really can't emphasize enough Prepare your materials and so you got to know your materials cold and then step back after you think you've got your talk written and then say, okay If I don't know anything about this and I'm just going to be looking at this Am I conveying to the audience what I want to convey and look at it that way or again Maybe have somebody else have one of your peers look at the talk and then when you practice your talk Practice in front of people actually put the timer out there And you know time the talk that you're going to have to do and practice in front of people and ask them for criticism Okay, how's this slide? How's that slide? Are the tables good? Are they bad and? Put the time in that it takes to prepare and again you guys have residence day coming up So you know put the time in to prepare the talks and I've got to tell you We were talking a little bit before with those who were here on time the two of you Resonate a talks through the years have gotten really good And you know you guys do a really good job at resident a talks But again prepare them talk in front of your peers you can talk to lay people your Significant others go over them and ask them for critiques and then go ahead and and you know Actually stand up as if you're doing it Don't just kind of sit down at your desk and do the talk actually stand up Somewhere pretend like you're really giving the talk click through the slides Like you do and have the timer there and pretend you're actually giving it because once you do that two or three times You'll kind of know That you can do it on time You'll know that your materials good and then after that just do a little brief You know brief summary ahead of time So I always take like you know either take your PowerPoint with you or take your notes with you when somebody else is talking Don't panic. I mean it's like you know studying right before you walk into the test Don't do that but just kind of look at the highlights. Okay I'm gonna talk about this this and it's okay, and then you're set. You're ready to go Questions comments Okay Writing papers another thing that that you know nobody sits down and tells you how to do and you know you guys are Expected to do that a lot so when you're writing papers Again does this sound repetitious? No your material So if you're gonna write a paper know what you're writing and you really Dig into what it is that you're writing about look up all the references look up all the other papers Know your material cold before you even start so then look at your data Review all the data know it is you're gonna write look at the look at the references Review the statistics sit down with somebody and know that all ahead of time now again types of papers are just like types of talks Because they're different there's case reports, you know case reports are again Joe Friday just the facts ma'am You know so you want to just put the Brief essentials in there. They only allow you so many references They only allow you so many words so many pictures and so that's a really different paper now routine scientific article Is almost like your regular five to seven minute talk, you know, it's your your introduction You know materials and methods results discussion conclusions. I mean that's your your usual paper now review articles are different Because review articles are much longer. You need to cover the entire literature. So those are huge undertakings I mean those are very difficult to do and then of course technique papers are different because those are kind of the fluff papers Those are just in this neat. We did this thing and you know, those are ones you want to have videos linked to them And you want to have pictures in there Okay, so steps in writing the paper I mean the first thing is you've got to gather all your data Because you want to know what it shows before you start writing you review all the references I find an outline really helpful and you know start with an outline You know what it is you're going to say you can do it as an outline You can do it almost like you're doing the PowerPoint But put the skeleton of what you want to say in there before you start adding the parts to it And I find that helpful now the order of the paper, you know, this is again It sounds silly, but but you know how many people turn in junk to the journal that doesn't even have these this stuff in there But you know, you want to do a title on abstract Introduction materials and methods results conclusions. Okay, so how do I write a paper? And again? This is just from experience. I write the paper inside out And what I mean by that is when you are going to write a paper It really looks like a big thing when you're going to sit down and do it You know, you know how to start it. Oh my god. How do I start this? So write up the part that's the easiest first and that's the materials and methods I mean, you know what you did because you did the study and so write that first it gets you started and So write the materials and methods out completely, you know, as if that's going to be in the paper Then the second thing is you write the results Then you do all the results you put in whatever tables you have you put in whatever you've got write the results then go back and do the introduction and Then after that you do the discussion and after that you do the abstract and conclusions. So do that last And so if you start in the middle inside out, it's kind of like when we're learning Faco here, you know Again, we're all OCD we think we're going to learn Faco from step one to step 20 No Because steps, you know one and two can screw up the whole case and so we kind of start inside out So the first thing you do is you remove some cortex you put in an I well Then you do the Faco then you do the one then you do the rex is it's kind of the same thing with the paper Write the materials and methods first because that's what you know already Then do the results Then you can go ahead and do the introduction and then the discussion then lastly You'll do the abstract and conclusions. And so don't just sit down and say oh shoot abstract What am I going to say? Get started and then it'll flow and it's a lot easier that way And especially once you start finishing all the results then you'll say oh, you know This is what I really want to say and that makes it easier All right, so plan your time carefully and I call this the rule of ten or zero So you say oh, this is easy. I can do this in ten hours add a zero. It's a hundred hours It's not arithmetic. It's logarithmic. And so the first time you're sitting down to write, you know Some kind of a major paper you think oh, yeah, I could do this easy add a zero and people you'll say nah Nah, he's it and then you sit out of doing you say oh my god. He's right So it takes like you know logarithmic. It's ten times as long as you think it's going to take So plan out your time accordingly if you think it's ten hours It's really going to take a hundred and so give yourself lots of time to do this Don't put it off till the end and then try to do it You know like you did in early college when you know You're writing papers and you're up at 2 a.m. Typing and you guys didn't type a month. You're up at 2 a.m. at your computer Computing, you know I'm trying to put it together So don't wait till the last minute And then again don't forget when people get bored throwing some Throwing some slides that that you know make a little bit fun Okay, so the final preparation of the paper. I can't emphasize this enough read it read it again Put it down read it again. I mean you don't know how many times when your brain Sees something you read what you think it should say not what it really says and so Read it reread it reread it over again spell check And you're lucky now you've got no excuse you've got computers now that do this for you You don't have to pull out a book and look it up like we used to have to you know You've got a computer does this automatically spell check. There's no excuse for any misspelling in a paper anymore You know the other thing check for proper grammar again grammar just just drives editors nuts and so Check for grammar and I have great respect now for people who write papers not in their primary language I couldn't imagine writing a paper and like you know mandarin or something. I mean that's That would just blow me away and there are people from China and from Japan who are writing papers in English And that just that's amazing to me that they can do that when it's not the primary language But you know check for proper grammar and this is almost like when you're practicing for your talks Have other people read it have peers have friends have colleagues and this is where people can help you I mean even like secretaries anybody read it to see if they'll pick up awkward sentences, you know grammatical errors spelling errors and So have people read it ahead of time because you don't want a Reviewer to send back your paper and say yeah, well, it's a good idea, but the grammar is so bad It's not worth taking so you don't want to not have a paper accepted Just because you didn't take the time to you know, check the grammar and check the spelling and you know Make sure it's well written Check the quality of figures and graphs because nowadays when you submit papers you do it all electronically The journals have ways of checking it and if you don't have enough You know Mega pixels in each little picture then they won't accept it And so each journal has you know their requirements and so make sure you check and meet those requirements So follow the instructions for the authors You don't know how many times we get papers that come in where they've just not followed the instruction Just blatantly didn't follow them and we don't even review those. We just send them back. It's like no You know, we're not going to look at this till you do it And there's no excuse. It's right there when you go to the instructions for the authors It tells you step by step How you should do it and how to format it and you know what the photos should be in and so spend the time to Follow the instructions now where to send it people often say, where do you send this? What do you do? This is where your mentors your superiors People who you've worked with can be very helpful because they'll let you know Because you know when you're writing a paper and again, we all do this. We're biased This is the greatest paper in the world. I'm gonna send this to ophthalmology. I'm gonna send this to you know IOVS, this is the greatest paper and then somebody else can look at it and say yeah, well, it's okay But you know, maybe that's not the right place to send it and so Talk to your peers and not not your peers I'm sorry your mentors and people who have a little bit more experience because they can guide you on where to send this Because that'll save you a lot of time. I mean we all think our stuff is great But you know send it to the journal ophthalmology ophthalmology accepts about 15% of what's sent in there So unless it's a great paper, they're not going to accept it That's gonna kill several months of time plus make you feel bad when it gets rejected And so be realistic about where you're gonna send it to and that's the key thing realism again Be realistic about where you're gonna send it to now on the other hand. I Often tell people well, you never know give them the right of first refusal And so if you say okay, this isn't so timely that if it doesn't get out in the next month It's gonna be an issue if you say well Maybe this is a good paper to good journal go ahead and send it to good journal once and then if they reject it Then you can send it to you know, maybe a smaller journal. So that's okay But just realize ahead of time that that's a that's a moonshot, you know, that's like when you're applying for residency Well, okay, I can apply to Baskinem, but it's not gonna cause you any harm, but You know, who knows? All right, we're almost there. We're almost there. So I Love this slide because whenever you ever watch, you know medical shows on TV The OR has always had this gallery there, you know, and the students are watching up I've never seen an OR with a gallery at least in the US. I haven't So what happens when a paper sent in and this is kind of like a black box first of all either the editor of the editorial staff will briefly look at a paper and Then see where it's going to be a sign and and what they're going to do with it And then once it's assigned to a particular editor or sub editor They'll send it to probably at least two peer reviewers And you don't think they spend a lot of time, but you know as an editor I do 12 hours a week now doing this and so it's a lot of time and you pick out reviewers who have expertise in that area And the other thing a good editor will do is is even though we think we're not biased we are and So especially an ophthalmology, they're papers that are put together by company a And of course company other a says no those aren't any good and and I have to spend time worrying about okay This guy is a on the speakers bureau of company a I'll never say shill But you know there's shill for company a and this is for the other company So you have to make sure that you send it to neutral reviewers and be careful But there's usually at least two Peer reviewers in addition to an editor a sub editor who looks at it But the final decisions rest with the editors or the sub editors And so I have actually on occasion will even override or you or you will say oh we should reject it This is bad and then I review the comments. I say, you know this this Guy's really not on the money. He missed the boat and so I'll override them The other thing we do as editors is we actually grade our reviewers And so if we have a particularly good reviewer we grade them high if we have a bad one We grade them low and then we just don't use them anymore And so we actually grade our reviewers because all reviewers are not equal But the final decision is with the editor the sub editor. Okay, so first of all if you get a Form back that says yes, we you know, we we're recommending revisions. That's good news Because right now most journals are so overwhelmed. They'll just reject it if there's any questions So if you get a letter back that says, okay, we are going to you know recommend these revisions Then that's great news. That means chances are is if you do, you know what they ask and answer the questions You'll get it accepted. So that's actually good news. So don't you know, don't take that badly The biggest mistake I find is that people don't we read the reviewers comments carefully And so every once in a while, I'll get a paper and again I hate to stereotype it from a you know, very pompous German professor You know who's never wrong and basically they'll just send a long letter back totally refuting the reviewers and not answering Them saying our paper was perfect the way it was and and I mean that's when that just gets an editor going So I'll just reject it. I'll say well, you didn't you know respond to the reviewers questions You didn't answer them therefore you rejected and then I'll get a really nasty letter back a very haughty letter back professor chairman and so on so, you know Deutsche University, whatever her you know, so but You know, we read the reviewers comments carefully and answer them And so if you disagree with the reviewers, that's okay But go through everyone and so if you get a list of reviewers comments and there's 20 of them when you send the comments back to the You know editor when you send in your revised paper, you actually do a letter at a time. So okay in response to reviewers question 1 Yes, we agree with the reviewer. We're going to change it on page 5. Here it is If you disagree, that's okay And you can say I respectfully disagree with the reviewer on this point We already discussed that here and we don't feel that's necessary to discuss it further here or yes That's a great point But we just couldn't do that in this particular study and maybe we'll do it in another study But answer every point don't just kind of let them slide or else they're not going to do that So again, be careful when you dispute a reviewer You know, it's okay, but explain it well and so say, you know The reviewer said this but really what we meant was that and here's why and explain it And if you do most editors are pretty good and they'll say, okay, we'll buy that. We'll accept that All right, so you're almost your brain on your brains are full almost excused All right, so publication time. This is the other thing that people get perturbed about it can be up to six months After you get that paper, you know, accept it in there to see it and print So I always tell my research fellows, you know, they want to have this printer before they start residence It's like it's not even a printer when you're an intern Maybe when you're the resident now the fact that journals are electronic now is cut the time down some then a lot of journals are now Doing e-publications ahead of time. So once it's officially accepted, you know, you'll see it'll say, okay Available electronically maybe in you know in January when the print issue won't even come out till like April And so it's available early and the thing is is once it's that got that electronic tag on it that counts as a real article So you can put that on your CV and you know, you can claim credit for that But but just be patient don't get anxious It's gonna come out eventually so patience is important Now if it's rejected following the first submission say just you know, you send an ophthalmology and they say yeah This is fine, but it's rejected Take the reviewers comments and say, okay, why did someone reject this and then see If I can answer those comments in a revision and then send it somewhere else So sometimes the reviewers comments are really helpful. Hey, listen, you didn't discuss this you didn't discuss that It's a good paper, but and when you revise the paper Don't just send the same paper to another journal Look at the reviewers comments because we'll always forward them to somebody and use those to make it a stronger paper And then try to send it somewhere else And so use that as an experience don't get discouraged You know use it to make it a better paper And so as they said in the godfather, you know, one of my favorite lines is there. It's not personal business You know when they're killing somebody and so if you get, you know paper rejected. Remember, it's not personal You know, it's business. Just just business. So Don't take it personally just say, you know what these guys bless you You know, they're only accepting anywhere depending on the journal from from 10 to 30% of all papers And so don't take it personally Just learn from it try to send it somewhere else try to make it a better paper Don't get discouraged. I mean use it as a learning experience And sometimes you'll find that you know every once in a while, you know After I get over the first thing and I say, what do you mean? It's rejected Then I'll look back and I'll read the reviews comments. I'll say Yeah, that really wasn't that good of a paper. Let's maybe think about you know Maybe continuing the study but in a better way or beefing it up here or adding something here and Uses an experience and maybe you can make it a better paper by if you can extend the study or you're in the lab You could do more tests or something use it to make it a better You know a better one and then of course what everybody says whenever you get beaten down They see well, it's a learning experience, you know, I love when they say that. Yeah Well, you just got hit over the head with a hammer, but it's a learning experience Use it as such All right, and so again practice makes perfect first time you do a paper. It's excruciating second time It's a little less bad by the time you do a hundred of these they get you know You get pretty good at these and so just like anything else just like doing fake. Oh's You know practice makes perfect and eventually you'll get good at doing this and you'll be able to crank them out quicker All right, that's it questions