Research!
As I mentioned earlier, the first weekend in November I got to go to Seattle to present a poster based on the research I did for my senior thesis. It was dope. There weren’t any grad schools there that I was interested in, but I met a bunch of cool undergrads and grad students. It surprised me at first, but the people there were way cooler than the kids I met last year at an undergraduate business conference. The pre-business kids mostly seemed pettily ambitious and had no real skills… the science kids I met last weekend had interesting things to say. The organizers also did a good job getting breadth of research and presenters (topics, geography, and even gender and ethnicity). Who’da thought half the presenters would be girls? That’s good for many reasons.
So now I’m excited about extending the research I did when I get back to school… there’s a bunch of possible/intriguing next steps, maybe I’ll be able to revolutionize political polling… we’ll see.
I also got to spend the weekend with Kat (now “Katherine,” or so I hear), my sponsor from freshman year, who gave me free lodging, tours of some bars, and introductions to cute dogs, and generally made the weekend happy. Thanks Kat! She and her roommates are grad student-ing at UW and making research look fun.