It is halfway into the quarter and I haven’t written anything on here for a while. I never realized how quickly life can get busy. The first weekend of the quarter I went to Blakely Island. It was a blast. Once I got into the required classes for my major I finally started making close friendships. I am glad I have a place like Blakely to hang out with these friends and do research with them. On Blakely we went night canoeing and may or may not have jumped into the lake from the floating dock in the middle of the lake.
The week following Blakely I headed off to Calgary to present research. The conference was with the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. I had never presented research before, and I started out completely terrified. Once I started it was fun and exciting, because once you realize no one knows what your research was on but you (and your lab) it is easy to explain to other people. My presentation was in the form of a poster, which I stood in front of and gave my spiel to whoever stopped by. I met graduate students and professors from all over the country. This was a really great experience, I am so thankful for the opportunity to work with the people in the SPU labs. They inspired me at this conference and showed me how fun it is to share research in the scientific community.
Me and my poster
Once I got back from Calgary I realized the next conference I was to present at was only a month away, with the poster due a week before that. The realization that my research was still in the process of data collection made me realize it was crunch time and my team needed to kick it into high gear. Recently I have been spending many hours in the lab each day making slides.
Prepping samples
Gearing up
I have had some time for play though. I have kept off of Facebook (with the exception of sneaking on to my mom’s occasionally so that I am not entirely out of the loop). I have also significantly reduced the amount of TV I have been watching, I probably only watch 1 or 2 shows a week now.
I have kept pretty busy. I have been trying to spend more time outside – going for walks, hiking, sailing. I’ve even hit the rock climbing gym a couple of times. I also made a new sailing buddy!
Or so I thought..I wrote this when the relationship had just started and never posted it. Now the winds have changed. Read more about it in my next post The Wind in My Sails
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