Here we are! We made it. Got the poster finished and printed out. Shared the flight with the research group and many more Davis graduate students and professors. Just a relatively short flight to Arizona. Stayed in an Air BnB for the week of the conference. Here's a photo from the first day after we had gotten our name badges.
It is of course wild that we got the opportunity to come. I've wanted to come every year that I've been at Davis but could never afford it. This time the lab actually was able to help us out and pay for the conference fees!
We presented a collective research poster in the middle of the conference. We were staged in the karst research area and had people at the booth the entire time. We also gave out resumes and talked to others in our field to see what schools had graduate programs with similar research emphasis.
The conference in total was great. Ellie, Kim, and I all got to listen to too many talks but also networked in group sessions and were able to talk to representatives from big name colleges. We also got to hear from our own graduate students speaking about their research, and take notes on what presenting to scientists really looks like.
I spoke seriously with a representative from Ohio State about a Masters program. I had reached out to the PI a couple weeks prior and she told me to link up with her Masters student who would be presenting. We got coffee and from me explaining my research experience, she made it seem like I would be a good match for the program.
Ellie had just come back from a research funded summer internship at UT Austin and was more prepped (I felt) to talk with graduate programs. She could really land herself at another great school for graduate work. She was prepared to present her other research at AGU later in December of this year, so she's definitely a bright star.
Ellie and I took one day off to explore ASU and it's earth science building while meeting up with one of my friends from kindergarten, Emily. She gave us a tour of the campus while in between classes. I enjoyed the break and learning about the campus. I can't speak for Ellie, but I think she had fun on our little detour as well.
Babs had warned us about burnout, and that if we hit too many talks too many days in a row that our minds would be fried. I definitely felt that by the end. I actually felt pretty sick on the last day--not sure what caused it. The weather was also interesting with pretty hot, humid days, and also very rainy days. Didn't slow us down that much--though I'm happy we didn't have to carry around our poster in the rain.
After GSA, Kim, Ellie, and Babs had to get back into the school mode pretty quickly. Getting the permissions to miss the first week of school for research in your major wasn't the easiest thing to accomplish surprisingly... I however, had my time in the lab wrapping up, as grant money was getting low, and I was about done with the samples. GSA was a nice capstone for my research though and I hope to go back soon.
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