My Interview with the Famous Baroness Susan Greenfield - Part 2

 

Two points that Dr. Greenfield made in my podcast interview with her: 

1.  Life is made up of stories with a clear Beginning, Middle, and End and
2. To learn from experience requires Reflection

Here is the story of and learning from my interview with Baroness Susan Greenfield.

Beginning:

It started at the Douglas Adam's Memorial event that I attended in March, where Dr. Greenfield gave a fascinating lecture about brain plasticity and creativity.  In that blog post, I describe the power of connections.. how Becky introduced me to Lee who introduced me to the books of Douglas Adams, which brought us all to the event at which Susan spoke.

I connected with Susan on LinkedIn and invited her to be a guest on my podcast, not realizing the huge magnitude of her celebrity and achievements!

Middle:

When Susan's assistant got back to me and said she'd agreed to be on my podcast, I was a mix of elated and petrified! I'd done enough research at this point to realize she was a super-star and in a much higher league than my typical podcast guest.

I immediately became insecure about my knowledge of brain health, podcasting skills and speaking skills.  I like a challenge, though, and often take myself out of my comfort zone as a motivation to learn new skills.  

However, my cataract surgeries left my eyes unexpectedly impaired for the last month so I didn't do nearly the amount of "homework" I would have liked to do to really ask intelligent questions about the brain and Alzheimer's.

I was saving most of my preparation for the week before our interview because my expectation was that my UV lens treatments would have allowed me to see normally again by then. 

When the first UV treatment didn't work as expected and my vision was still really poor, I went into a bit of a panic - Were the lenses defective? ineffective? Would I never be able to read clearly again? 

After another visit to the doctor, it was discovered that my left eye was extremely dominant. The doctor said the brain is acting as though its hard-wired to use my left eye and we would have to wait and see whether or not it would be able to adjust to using the right eye, too.

Despite my vision challenges, I did the preparation work required for the podcast, enlisting the help of friends for question selection and role playing.  

Becky, especially, did an excellent job of role playing in a practice interview!  As a PhD Linguist, it turns out she has quite a bit of training about the brain under her belt herself! She also did a better job than my ophthalmologist of reassuring me that due to my own brain plasticity, she was certain my brain would adjust to using my right eye and giving me better vision.  (It IS getting better, though still has a way to go.)

End:

The podcast went better than expected! No technology snafus. No awkwardness. Susan was as easy to talk to as any friend. She had a welcoming smile that put me at ease. All my worrying about my own lack of celebrity was completely unnecessary.

What was most exciting for me about this experience was learning how close our world is to a cure for Alzheimer's! And I got to speak and connect with one of the scientists who is directly responsible!

Learnings

There were 3 skills that I'd felt insecure about and wanted to be better with before the interview:

1. Podcasting
2. Speaking
3. Knowledge of the topic (in this case Brain Health)

I made conscious efforts to improve in all of these areas. For podcasting, I bought a new microphone and learned how to use Audacity better for sound editing.  I scripted and practiced the interview with friends so that when it came to the actual interview, I felt more prepared than usual. I learned so much about brain health. (More blog posts to come!) 

But beyond these skills I made an intentional effort to improve, I also made progress with growth in two unintentional areas.

• Social Insecurity

I had felt so insecure about speaking to such an intelligent and academic super-star. In general, any kind of "public speaking" is very uncomfortable for me unless I feel very confident in the topic.  

Of course, it's much easier to ask questions on a Zoom call than to do a presentation, and it all turned out fine and natural. I feel grateful that Susan (as she asked me to call her) was so down-to-earth, despite her very lofty credentials.

• Anxiety about the state of my eyes

This anxiety I'm feeling about my eyes has been pretty intense. It crossed my mind to cancel or postpone the interview because I just couldn't focus (with my brain or my eyes!)

However, the interview and the increased challenge distracted me from worrying about the unknowns about the future of my eyes.  I was forced to adapt. That's the very thing brain plasticity gives us! Adaptability!

I'm feeling a little less anxiety now that I'm seeing some improvement in my eyes.  And I'm confident that even if my vision doesn't get any better, I can wear glasses like millions of others.  Adapting to my vision issue is nothing compared with serious diseases like Alzheimer's

However that gets me again, to the most exciting thing I learned from this experience.

A cure for Alzheimer's is on the horizon