The Fourth Annual SUEP Undergraduate Research Conference

Saturday 11 April

So once in awhile, I actually put on lady clothes and do things that are productive and related to my professional career. Saturday was one of these occasions.

Woke up incredibly well-rested and drove home to the Shire, where I took a shower and started to look like a real person until I just ended up drinking a liter of Naked Juice on the couch wrapped in a blanket watching 30 Rock to de-stress. I then curled my hair, put on makeup, put on clothes that weren't jeans and a t-shirt, and stepped into my pair of black patent leather stilettos. I looked like a fucking lady for once in my life.

I then walked over to Hale Sciences. I ended up taking off my shoes and my cardigan because I got hot on the walk and my feet started to hurt, and as I was crossing University, a car honked and hollered at me and I was like "Oh my god, I look like I did not quite make it home last night." Which I didn't, but that's not the fucking point.

Gotta have some dysfunction in this life to make things work out a little bit.

Anyway. I got a really official-looking nametag as a presenter this year at the 4th Annual SUEP Research Conference. I got to hear some seniors present on their research on women's access to health in the world and alternative communities in Brazil, and they were both fucking spectacular and mine literally couldn't hold a candle to theirs. It was rad.

This is actual footage of me presenting at the conference:

I Have No Idea What is Going On

Hi, my name is Maggie Rose, I am a junior Norlin Scholar, and most of the time I have a really hard time talking to people I don't know. I have been described as "confident," "charismatic," "knowledgable," and "well-prepared" when I present to people, but honestly 95% of the time I have no idea what the everloving fuck I'm actually doing. Apparently, things come out of my mouth that make a marginal amount of sense.

Evidently, that was the case on Saturday, so people kind of kept up with me and there were some good questions that dealt with my data, mostly. I talked a little fast, and apparently my accent came out a little bit, which was non-ideal at best but whatever. Paddy asked most of the questions that dealt with the theory I couldn't get to in the 15 minutes allotted to me, which was nice to flesh out, and she asked some valuable stuff that will probably come up when I defend this paper in about a week for the political science department. So that was pretty nice.

My mom also came up to Boulder and watched me talk about trade, and that meant a lot, if only to see a familiar, albeit confused, face in the audience. My mom is seriously the fucking best, guys.

I then watched some more presentations about Edgar Mearns, sustainability accounting, and climate change and infrastructure. They were really neat and raised some interesting questions. Then I went to the poster session, where my friend Ben talked about burning poop, Rajani talked about beetles migrating to other places and changing their DNA, one guy talked about islands of stability in waves (which is helpful in the Schrödinger equation fyi), another guy talked to me about his senior design project involving the Orion spacecraft and telescoping instruments (that was cool, space nerds that I know), and I also heard about python DNA potentially treating hypertension. By that point, I was pretty fried and didn't know exactly what was happening.

So yeah. That was my first of many academic conferences. It was pretty exciting to share my research and watch other people get excited about it too. Now maybe ten other people can get excited about DSMs in trade agreements, which is all I've ever wanted out of life. I'll take it.

Anyway. Ended the day by going over to Evan's and watching hockey with the gang (the things I do for love) and drinking wine, watching the Purple Wedding, learning Italian for the boy's trip to Rome, and making terrible puns with Dani's future roommate, whom I like a lot and can definitely stay. Slept over and had a nice ten hours of solid sleep, which is all I need.

So yes. Research is fucking rad, tbh. It's fun. I'm bothered by how narrow the focus has to be, and theory-building is a bitch, and most of the time it's all bullshit. But let's be real: I came to college to learn more cool stuff about the world around me for the sake of learning more cool stuff about the world around me. Maybe it'll only change ten people's lives on the high end, but hell, at least I can do something with my skills as an academic. I might go on a rant later about it.

Anyway. Thanks for reading :)