Week 6: Rehearsing with Friends

Now that you’ve had time to fine-tune your presentation on your own, it’s time to bring in some trusted feedback. It’s time to practice with members of your Fan Club.

The purpose of rehearsing with other people is to get honest reactions about your talk. The second rehearsal gives you the chance to simulate the real competition environment, adjust based on their reactions, and gain valuable insights. Their questions and suggestions will help you refine your delivery and strengthen your message.

Before we dig in, let’s hear what previous competitors think about rehearsing with friends.

“I always practice with friends. I tell them ‘I’m going to give this talk right now and I want you to watch it and tell me exactly what you think. Be brutal if you can and be honest with your opinion because I want to be better.’”

~Pewee Datoo Kolubah, Falling Walls 2024, 3rd place, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia

“ The activity that stuck with me is when you share your research with someone, and then they have to repeat back what you said in their own words. That helped me understand if the explanation didn’t work or if they completely misunderstood it. Some of it could be them, but a lot of it could be me.”

~ Ainul Huda, Nutshell Games, 2024, winner, Virginia Tech, U.S.

“It was good to have the insight from someone who knows absolutely nothing about science.”

~ Eliška Jandová, FameLab, 2022, 1st place, Charles University, Czech Republic

Week 6 Goals

NEED TO RECONCILE THESE WITH WEEK 6 EXERCISES

To achieve your goals in Week 6, you will need approximately five hours to complete the exercises, including buffer hours:

Practice your GRC talk in front of an audience and record it. (Exercise 6.1 & 6.3)
Collect feedback from the audience and reflect on whether/how to incorporate it. (Exercise 6.2 & 6.4)
Watch your recording and make notes about changes you want to make.
Watch a GRC talk with a friend using the rubric. (Bonus Exercise)

Receiving Feedback

In general, when asked about their reactions to something, people tend to focus on what they didn’t like, and what they think could be improved. This inclination is natural, but it still stings a bit, doesn’t it? If you have a hard time hearing what sounds like criticism, know that their reactions are making you a stronger communicator. Even if you disagree with someone’s reaction, it is their valid experience, and you should try to take it into consideration. Remember that feedback is about the content, not about you or your personal character. And you might be surprised by some complimentary feedback!

Here are some suggestions for how to receive feedback:

Ask your audience to wait to comment until they have heard your entire GRC talk. Some people may try to interrupt you and give you feedback in the moment. One of your tasks with this exercise is to practice keeping to your GRC time limit. Ask them to take notes and remind them that there will be lots of time for discussion after your talk concludes.
Be an open-minded listener. When someone is sharing their reactions to your talk, resist the temptation to become defensive and explain your choices. For example, they may say “Your opening was really boring, and I really had to concentrate to keep listening to you.” I know such a comment might be difficult to hear, but your current goal is to understand how your talk was received by your audience. To do that, you need to listen and try not to interrupt (unless something is genuinely confusing, and you need to clarify in that moment).
Ask clarifying questions. After your audience has given you their thoughts, take time to go deeper into their comments. You could follow up on the previous comment by asking, “Do you have specific ideas for a stronger opening?” Or “Was anything in my talk confusing or hard to understand?” Even though their comments might not be what you were hoping to hear, try to view their statements as objective information that you need to clarify further.
Be mindful of your body language while listening to feedback. Try to minimize or eliminate any negative facial expressions that might reveal your attitude about what you are hearing from your audience. If your audience sees you getting upset or angry, they may moderate or soften their feedback, which means you won’t get the whole truth.

Acting on Feedback

Now that you have a list of feedback comments from your audience, how do you decide which pieces of advice to implement and which to discard? The good news is that you get to make these choices. But how? I recommend that you categorize the feedback into three groups. It might help to use the traffic light convention of green for yes; yellow for maybe; and red for no.

Start with the ideas that resonated with you immediately. When you heard them, you thought “yes, this is a perfect idea.” Add them to your green bucket. Be sure to try the idea as soon as you can to make sure it is going to work as you anticipate.

Next, go to the red bucket: The comments you know that you will not (or cannot) implement, for whatever reason. Maybe someone suggests you wear a costume, but your GRC rules don’t allow it. Or maybe someone wants to see more data, but your experiments won’t be done in time. Those you can disregard.

Finally, the third category will be the “maybe” group. These are ideas you heard that you are unsure about. For example, maybe someone found your slide(s) too overwhelming because of your charts and graphs. If you are using hypothetical buckets, add them to your yellow one.

To prioritize these comments, consider who among the audience gave you that reaction, and how many times you heard it. If you had an audience of three friends, and two of them shared the same perspective, think deeply about the validity of their reaction and try to modify your talk if you can.

Memorizing Your Talk

The “big” accomplishment that you are aiming for this week is to have most of your talk memorized. Unless one of your superpowers is memorization, this task just comes down to repetition. That said, here are some suggestions to make the process more systematic:

Break the talk into smaller chunks and memorize them one by one. One method is to use word counts and memorize 10 to 15 words at a time. Another approach is to memorize natural sections one at a time. For example, your opening, your problem statement, your solution, etc.

Make the most of your time. Because these presentations are only a few minutes long, you can rehearse the entire talk on your walk from class to the lab, or in the shower, or while you are making dinner.

Ask a partner to “run lines” with you. Give them a printout of the script. Ask them to read a couple of sentences, and then you complete the section from memory.

Sing your lines. If music helps you remember, consider applying your script to a song you like. You may have to try a few different songs to get the right feel.

Record yourself doing the talk from memory. When you watch the recording, observe where you struggle and think about how to modify those moments in the talk.

Commit to rehearsing for a few minutes every day to build your skills and confidence.

Week 6 Takeaways

Here are the key takeaways from Week 6:

1. Practice with real people for honest feedback.

Practicing your talk in front of friends or peers and asking for brutal honesty is one of the most effective ways to improve. Doing your talk in front of a live audience helps to simulate real conditions, and the feedback you receive gives you valuable insight into how your talk is received.

2. Clarity is measured by how well others understand you.

A powerful exercise is having someone repeat your message back to you in their own words. If they misunderstand, it’s often a sign your explanation needs refining—not their listening skills.

3. Listen actively and stay open to criticism.

Feedback can sting, but it’s not personal—it’s about the content. Avoid getting defensive and instead focus on understanding the reactions, asking clarifying questions, and keeping a neutral body language to encourage honest responses.

4. Be strategic with feedback.

Not all feedback is equally useful. One effective strategy is to organize comments into three categories:

Yes (immediate improvements)
No (not useful or not feasible)
Maybe (worth considering, especially if repeated by multiple people)

5. Memorization takes repetition and creativity.

To internalize your talk, break it into chunks and practice consistently. Use creative strategies like rehearsing while you walk, singing your script, or running lines with a partner. Recording yourself helps pinpoint weak spots and track improvement.