Materials Research Society
Nov. 30th, 2005 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omlyThe MRS conference is this week and I have been running myself ragged. I am so jealous of the students here from other parts of the country/world who just get to do the conference without the regular day to day responsibilities. Since I paid the registration cost out of pocket I have been trying to get as much out of it as I could.
Overheard - Quote of the day (from the email newsletter sent out to registrants)
"Nano is big. It is not all hype."
- Tom Weber, Director, Division of Materials Research, NSF
The poster session monday night was wonderful. I got home a little before midnight completely effervescent. I have not felt this good about my research... well since I started. I met some really interesting people, had in depth technical conversations within my field. I felt like I genuinly had a place being there. This may not seem like a big thing, but it was enormous to me. If nothing else, I think going to the conference was worth it simply to gain this optimisism and excitement back.
Also while I was at the poster session I saw some people from my undergraduate. Soon I will know no one there but the professors. A last of the students I knew are senors and were presenting their research. (We have a required senior thesis as undergraduate chemists there.) It was so good to see Gurney! We have to make plans to get in together in the next few weeks. It has been too long.
There were a bunch of good sessions yesterday. I need to type up a document about who I saw and what they were studying. Also many emails need to be sent out to contact the people I spoke with to continue communication. Today there was little that was interesting to me so I am home finishing up my neglected homework that I have been putting off so that I could go to poster sessions and the like. Not enough research has been done this week either. I am hoping to contacts I am making will offset that though, because I am running at full steam now and have still run out of hours in the day.
There is only one somewhat sad note to all of this. Being the only modeler in my group means that although they might get the overview of what I do, no one asks me the really interesting challenging questions. The one person who does really understand is incredibly mellow and not one to do so. He is really nice, but overhearing a conversation in the food court yesterday between a modeler and her advisor, I really kind of felt what I was missing there. I am not saying that I need my hand held, but a little bit of guidance would be nice, particularly since changing my research topic I have not really felt like I was really strong in my foundation. I guess in part too, I feel like I am being asked to do PhD sort of work, but all I want is my masters. I guess that is not true because even the PhD students get more guidance. I had a conversation about this with WD at work, and she was really surprised by how little my adviser has been involved.
Ok that is my update for now. I should go back to my reactor homework for a bit before I pick up Tab from daycare.
Overheard - Quote of the day (from the email newsletter sent out to registrants)
"Nano is big. It is not all hype."
- Tom Weber, Director, Division of Materials Research, NSF
The poster session monday night was wonderful. I got home a little before midnight completely effervescent. I have not felt this good about my research... well since I started. I met some really interesting people, had in depth technical conversations within my field. I felt like I genuinly had a place being there. This may not seem like a big thing, but it was enormous to me. If nothing else, I think going to the conference was worth it simply to gain this optimisism and excitement back.
Also while I was at the poster session I saw some people from my undergraduate. Soon I will know no one there but the professors. A last of the students I knew are senors and were presenting their research. (We have a required senior thesis as undergraduate chemists there.) It was so good to see Gurney! We have to make plans to get in together in the next few weeks. It has been too long.
There were a bunch of good sessions yesterday. I need to type up a document about who I saw and what they were studying. Also many emails need to be sent out to contact the people I spoke with to continue communication. Today there was little that was interesting to me so I am home finishing up my neglected homework that I have been putting off so that I could go to poster sessions and the like. Not enough research has been done this week either. I am hoping to contacts I am making will offset that though, because I am running at full steam now and have still run out of hours in the day.
There is only one somewhat sad note to all of this. Being the only modeler in my group means that although they might get the overview of what I do, no one asks me the really interesting challenging questions. The one person who does really understand is incredibly mellow and not one to do so. He is really nice, but overhearing a conversation in the food court yesterday between a modeler and her advisor, I really kind of felt what I was missing there. I am not saying that I need my hand held, but a little bit of guidance would be nice, particularly since changing my research topic I have not really felt like I was really strong in my foundation. I guess in part too, I feel like I am being asked to do PhD sort of work, but all I want is my masters. I guess that is not true because even the PhD students get more guidance. I had a conversation about this with WD at work, and she was really surprised by how little my adviser has been involved.
Ok that is my update for now. I should go back to my reactor homework for a bit before I pick up Tab from daycare.
