Colloquia

People "do science" alone and in teams. Even members of large teams spend alot of time alone with their thoughts while developing the work, and the process of writing up an experiment and its results is a fairly solitary task. Though the write-up may be peer-reviewed, the review often occurs by email, and so the exchange of views with the audience at that point may seem pretty solitary. And then your publication may raise not a ripple.

As a scientist, you will need to learn how to feed scientific return to others, and, just as important, you need to learn how and when to ingest it or not.

You can see the feed and ingest process at scientific meetings and in department colloquia on college campuses. You need to practice this process. You need to look at argument and results, and think and form questions. You need to practice to be open enough to swallow the whole argument, and doubtful enough to ward off the whole argument, at the same time, over the course of less than an hour. Scientific meetings in your field rarely occur in your town, while out-of-town visitors present colloquia in every college department nearly weekly. Since the mechanics of transmitting scientific return to other scientists are as important as the return itself, you can learn alot by going to colloquia in departments outside your field. Consider some whose field appears in your favorite novels or newspaper articles. The departments usually serve cookies and coffee. If you really want to see how the guest speaker thinks among colleagues, the department usually takes the guest out to dinner, and students are encouraged.