Back to the antisocial part of science. For some reason, a lot of scientists (undergrads especially) try to avoid any sort of contact with people when prowling around poster presentations.
I'm all for having conversations with people about their research and making new friends (well, most of the time), but apparently not very many other people were. After about half an hour, however, I started getting people who would actual engage in conversation with me. One was a statistics professor who asked me the one question no undergrad ever wants to hear, "can you explain the statistics you did on these graphs?" I tried my best, since Jessi had been over them with me the day before, and finally he took pity on me and explained who he was and why he wanted to know. We discussed survival curves for awhile until another sassy undergraduate named Johnathan came up and started asking me about the antibodies that the pigeons create against flies, since he was interested in immunology. An hour later, I was allowed to tear down my poster and was officially FREEEE!!! I stuffed my poster back in its tube and then decided to attend the next poster session to see if there was any cool research going on. When I go to poster sessions, my bleeding heart makes me talk to people who look lonely and have no one asking about their poster, even if I am not interested in their poster AT ALL (or if I have no idea what's going on). Because of this, I learned about stuff I never would have inquired about, like geology, biochemistry, and psychology. I won't go into details about all of the SCIENCE I learned about, but it was COO. The best was when I found people with other BIRD RESEARCH!
There were a lot of east coast schools that study climate change and other effects of humans on birds and their habitat. Unfortunately, the people from these schools seemed a bit terrified of my enthusiasm and were not exactly...talkative. As much as I tried to make friends with them because we both loved BIRDS, they weren't interested. Oh well! I grabbed some lunch down in the cafeteria and then headed back to the posters and the grad fair, where I obtained some more stuff.
I had a lot of swag by the end of the day. I finally left the conference around four and went back to the shuttle, which was full of dicks. I escaped Weber State and went home to take a nap, glad to be done with my presentation. Later that night, Gabi came over so I could give her some velcro for her poster (to hang it on the presentation boards, since she was presenting the next day). She persuaded (aka begged) me to come with her to the conference the next day as well, so I woke up at 6 AM so we could get there before her presentation time at 8:30 AM.
Gabi was not pleased by Ogden. The ride up was fun because we had snacks and powerade and then ended up getting the ultimate car food: McDonald's breakfast. When we reached Weber State again, we registered Gabi and got me another lanyard (so I could get free stuff again) and then set up her poster. During her presentation time she explained to me her poster, which sort of went over my head, and then our old BioURP advisors and UROP advisor came over to visit us. We got our pictures taken (which I'll post once I get them; there are some special ones of me) and then visited some more until Gabi's session was over.
So we went to lunch. Downtown South Ogden is actually rather cute and vintage. Rooster's Brewery didn't open until 11 AM, so we wasted time at a cute boutique until it opened and then wasted some MORE time until 11:30 when we could get BEER. Then we decided we were about to pass out, so instead of returning to the conference we headed home to take two hour naps. It was delicious.
I also got my graduation cap, gown, and stole yesterday. Scarryyyyy.
I will post about spring break next, I PROMISE.
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