Tomorrow, our two year anniversary, we embark on an adventure to the South Island! We've only been on the North Island so far and are looking forward to exploring Queenstown. From what I've heard, it's a ski town and, as you might expect, has beautiful views. It makes me wonder how Bozeman-like it will be. :)
When I joined the Cognitive Behavioral Neuroscience Lab in May I soon learned that most of the students were planning to attend the Australian Winter Conference for Brain Research in Queenstown at the end of August. I immediately assumed that I wouldn't be able to attend because I had just started in the lab and I probably wouldn't have any data. The other students kept asking me if I was going to attend and when I hesitated they encouraged me to talk to my advisors and see what we could figure out. At our next advisor/advisee meeting I broached the subject and immediately my primary and secondary advisors, Bart and Dave, respectively, were whipping up ideas for a poster and offering to help fund my way. Happily surprised, I figured, "Why not?". So I will be presenting a poster that summarizes some research that was conducted just as I became a part of the lab group. The majority of the data is not mine but I did run an experiment last week to round out the data set.
I have to say that going to a conference and presenting what feels like someone else's data is quite daunting. To date I've presented at a couple very small conferences in and around MSU; in addition, I've presented twice at the biggest conference for brain and behavior research: Neuroscience. But each time I was presenting data that I had collected myself. So this feels very strange. I've read as much as I can in this short amount of time about the topic and am bracing for impact. I'm not too worried but there's apprehension there. In talking to my advisors and the other students I've been reminded that if I don't know the answer to a question it's perfectly acceptable to diplomatically say, "I don't know". It may sound strange but it's a small comfort.
When it was official that I was going to present at AWCBR I wanted to see if Tim could come along. Sure enough he's been able to get away from the lab this next week and we're taking advantage of this time to travel and explore more of NZ!
Pics to come!!
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