Science (non) Fiction

Under pressure

So in a span of about a week, we’ll be submitting my first ‘first-author’ paper and I’ll be presenting a poster at my first national conference in Orlando I’m a little overwhelmed by how fast things are moving, after so much slow-moving progress for the last couple weeks/months – I’ve bee perusing the program of posters/presentations for the conference and it’s quite mind-blowing the diversity of research interests represented by the hundreds of participants who will be there. These meetings are generally considered to be a great place to make contacts for future employment, which is also a bit daunting – I’m not exactly sure what the next couple years hold for me career-wise, whether I’m going to persue a traditional post-doctoral fellowship or consider a more ‘alternative’ teaching post-doc, which would allow me to gain more teaching experience while completing a couple years of research as well. Anyway, that just complicates things as far as what I’m looking for in a ‘next step’ – but this conference will hopefully be a great way to see what kind of exciting research is going on elsewhere in the country, at other great schools where I could potentially end up. Plus I just found out that the wonderful lady who let us use her beach house (who is working on her masters in biology at UNCC) will be there presenting a poster as well, so hopefully we’ll be able to get together and compare notes while we’re there

Once the paper is officially submitted and then finally accepted, I’ll let you know – in fact, there will be much joyful celebration and maybe even a couple foofy girly drinks to be had! In the meantime, I’m going to get back to packing for the conference (hard to decide what to wear to meet potential future employers/colleagues)…