NIMS Student Seminar December 2020 — My First Presentation and the Pressure Behind It
10 minutes to present. 5 minutes for questions.
Sounds short. But the preparation? Months — and the pressure runs much deeper than it appears from the outside.
What is the NIMS Student Seminar?
Every year, all students in the NIMS Graduate Program are required to participate in the annual student seminar — an event where each student presents their research results from the past year to a panel of NIMS reviewers.
The only exception: third-year doctoral students, who typically serve as session facilitators instead.
December 2020 marked my first time presenting. I was a first-year Master’s student at the time, roughly 8 months into research that had started in April.
What I Presented
My research topic at the time:
“Photothermal Heating and Heat Transfer Analysis of Anodic Aluminum Oxide with High Optical Absorptance”
In plain terms: we were studying how to improve heating efficiency by controlling pore size in anodic aluminum oxide.
The experiments were long and exhausting — especially the fabrication stage, which involved multiple sequential steps rather than one clean process. I’ll write up the technical details separately to keep this article readable.
The Hardest Part Wasn’t the Slides
A lot of people assume the most tiring part of student seminar preparation is making the presentation deck. It’s not.
The real challenge is fighting to get results that are actually worth showing — then organizing them into graphs or tables that reviewers can understand in a matter of minutes.
From around September each year, the same questions would start cycling through my head:
- “What results can I actually show this time?”
- “Is my data convincing enough?”
- “Will the reviewers be satisfied — or will they question everything?”
The Sentence That Haunts Every Student
Every year before the seminar, we were reminded of the same line:
“The results of this seminar will factor into whether your contract is renewed next year.”
Simple sentence. But enough to make anyone think very hard.
For international students like me, contract renewal wasn’t just about research continuity — it directly determined tuition and daily living expenses. No contract, no salary, no stability.
The irony is that over my five years at NIMS, my contract was always renewed without issue. My friends once mentioned that NIMS doesn’t cut contracts before students graduate. But somehow, the anxiety always came back every year before the seminar.
To this day I’m not entirely sure whether the pressure came from NIMS, from my supervisor, or from myself.
The Day of the Seminar: Waiting Last
The presentation order at the seminar follows academic level and year:
| Order | Group |
|---|---|
| 1st | Second-year doctoral students |
| 2nd | First-year doctoral students |
| 3rd | Second-year Master’s students |
| 4th | First-year Master’s students |
As a first-year Master’s student, I was in the last slot of the day.
The nervousness that started in the morning didn’t ease up — if anything, it got stronger as I watched everyone else finish their presentations one by one. Waiting for your turn is sometimes more draining than the presentation itself.
After the Presentation: Real Relief
When my turn finally ended, it felt like a heavy weight slowly lifting.
The feedback I received was fairly positive — constructive suggestions for improving the quality of my research in the next stage. Not excessive praise, but enough to confirm that eight months of work had come across clearly.
First NIMS Student Seminar — done. ✅
What 2021 Would Bring
The following year — 2021 — would turn out to be the most demanding year of my academic journey. But also the year with the most lessons and the most significant turning points.
That story continues in the next article.