Saturday, August 2, 2014

Well, Hello California!

My boss went out to California a few years ago to give a talk (there's a video of it) and the first thing she does when she gets on stage is, in the most enthusiastic tone, say "Well Helloo Californiiia". I would link the video, but we make fun of her enough for it as is and I think it would be nice to give her a break.

Every year we have to outline our goals for my PI (Principle Investigator, i.e. boss) in my lab. It's a nice way to see what we've accomplished in the last year and what we need to do to move forward in the coming year. This year, one of my goals was to present at an out-of-state conference. I wasn't expecting anything big, anything expensive, or anything far away. A month or so after that, my graduate student comes up to me and asks me if I'd like to go to San Diego, California for a big Experimental Biology conference. Apparently a few of the graduate students that were going won travel awards so my PI had thought it would be great to send me. The only problem was that I needed to have an abstract to submit by Friday and the conference would be during my Final Exams. I had 5 days to convince all my professors to allow me to reschedule my exams and have an abstract ready for submission in less than a week. Fun stuff. 

I'm much too lazy to detail how much convincing I had to do. Some professors would only let me go after I got all other professors to agree and blah blah. I had to take some tests a week earlier and my professors were very kind in letting me take them so early, and the day before I left for San Diego I had 3 tests and several papers due. But, I got to go. I was going to a big conference, that was far away (2100 miles), and I didn't have to pay for anything. It probably also looks good on my CV, but who cares about that? I was going to San Diego to soak in massive amounts of science and it was going to be fantastic. 

The flight was pretty standard. The last hour from Phoenix to San Diego had several crying babies, but headphones and sleep pretty much fixed that. The first 2 days we were there consisted of exploring and getting our badges for the conference. We took a nice little tour of the city and spent some time at the beach. Here, have a few pictures.
Random Boat and the Ocean. Also clouds.

My Badge! I think this is #4 or 5. I'm losing count. 

On those first days we went to the beach (the water was very cold), looked at small shops on the shore, took a trolley tour, ate very tasty food, and just took in the city.
San Diego is the most beautiful city that I've ever seen. If you know me, you know that I absolutely adore pretty much any city, but San Diego was just...wow. Something about the combination of the people, the beach, the ocean, the military base, the culture, the transportation, and the shops just made me think about how great it would be to live there, even if it is extremely expensive. Luckily, there's a large Research University, University of California San Diego, that I can add to the list of possible graduate schools that I can attend. I like living in Atlanta, but it has a far way to go before it can be anything like the greater North Eastern and Western cities. The convention center was also beautiful and the weather was fantastic. It rained every now and then for the first 2 days we were there, but it was the nice kind of rain that I appreciate.

 




Day one of the conference wasn't anything too exciting as far as the science goes, but there was an undergraduate poster competition (I was not a part of it). It was nice getting to meet other undergrads and it definitely made me appreciate my position more. I'm in my second year of schooling and I've been in my lab for 2 years now. I'm also at a large research university, which makes my life a lot easier. Many of the students I met went to undergrad only universities and didn't have access to a lot of the resources I do. It's definitely nice having grad students around for advice and they oft times set a good example of what I should reach for.

At the first undergrad meeting, the encouraged us to find a partner from another school and complete a scavenger hunt for a prize. First few people won a shirt of their choosing. Long story short, we won. I got this awesome T-shirt that says "[Cite Me]" and it was great. My labbies were very jealous of my awesome shirt. I would post a picture, but that's a lot of work and there isn't much to it.

When the talks started the next day, I was very excited. There is SO MUCH going on at EB. You have the meeting of various organizations who study different things. From Molecular Biology to Anatomy and I had to schedule out each day what talks i wanted to go to. There was a decent amount of stuff pertaining to my work, but some of the more interesting things were a bit out of my realm. I absolutely hate it when people start out talks saying "I know everyone in here is a [insert field that I had no clue existed until about 5 seconds ago, so I'm just going to skip all the background!" Because it makes it much harder for me to follow along. Oft times you'll see me in talks with my tablet looking up things as they talk about it just to keep up. All that aside, I learned a lot.

Another thing that I really appreciated were the career oriented talks. Some were focused at undergrads, others at people going into industry, making a nice CV, and choosing a grad school. I me the former head of admissions for a grad school that I want to go to and I got great advice.

I would give a play-by-play of the week, but this post is running a little long and it would take FOREVER to explain everything. The last thing I'll say is that the best part of the trip was definitely spending time "outside of work" with the grad students. We spent a decent amount of time together in the hotel hot tub talking about life and friendship and the latest department gossip. We spent an equal amount of time drinking tea and talking about science and watching TV. Now, enjoy a few more pictures.


This was my undergrad Scavenger-hunt buddy practicing her poster presentation for me!

The grad students had an event to go to early because they won travel awards. I just chilled in the convention center for a bit. Note: That is the softest hoodie in the world. 


You can see the red trolley in the background just in front of the convention center. I want to go back!


There was a HUGE vendor show. I got this awesome tote bag that I've been using for groceries. Look at all the science!

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