To earn many Master’s degrees and (probably) all PhDs, students must demonstrate what they have learned by performing and analyzing original research. This is the thesis or dissertation (usage varies by university, but my school and most others use “thesis” for Master’s, “dissertation” for PhD). Beyond the skills of theory, literature review, methodology, and analysis (to say nothing of time and resource management), one of the greatest challenges known to graduate students is developing an ability to actually talk about their research with friends, family, and other people outside their field.

Enter the 3-Minute Thesis.

3MT is a competition started in Australia just over a decade ago wherein graduate students demonstrate their “elevator pitch” by explaining their research in 180 seconds or less. Strict guidelines are enforced: the time limit, only being able to refer to a single static slide, audience engagement, and a dependence upon casual language — any academic term you introduce, you have to explain, which can cost precious seconds. 3 top contenders get prize money, and the judges’ top-rated competitor gets to compete at a higher level.

Moreover, though, competitors get to practice what we think we know about presentation, brevity, and lay-speak. AND, if you’re a real research geek like me, you get to learn about other interesting research happening at your own university! We had folks present about everything from “intermittent husbands” to refugee-veterans to the athletic impact of CBD oil.

The swag was pretty great, too. I won nothing and yet walked away with more than $50 in TWU accoutrements (though it would have been nice if one of the two T-shirts were anywhere close to my size). There was also a professionally printed certificate of participation signed by a provost, a dean, and one other administrator — my recently attained Graduate Certificate in Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies was less swank (I can’t decide whether I want this to sound like a dig on funding for MWGS/GCerts in general or as a tribute to how seriously the admins think this program benefits us; both are probably accurate).

As I said, I didn’t win anything, but the most gratifying part of the experience was how many people came up and talked to me about dementia care afterward. (Enough that I ran out of business cards!) Caregiving is ubiquitous, and so is dementia, and my presentation was an opportunity for people to connect with the topic a little more deeply — one of my ultimate goals with this research, to be honest. There is no reason for caregiving to happen in isolation, but someone has to bring these conversations into the light before most people will participate.

Equally important is the impact this friendly competition is having on my thesis itself; the effort to focus my ongoing thesis work (currently, I have a couple hundred pages of notes and only a couple dozen pages of drafted text) into a brief, accessible conversation piece has forced me to tighten how I think about the thesis itself. Yes, I have a lot to say about caregiving in research, but I should have my entire career to do that.

For now, I just need to make some salient points, run a few numbers, and get on to that first employer.