TrUE Scholars
The part of presenting my research at URC that was the most intimidating was getting prepared to be questioned by other disciplines. Although URC consisted mostly of science presentations, the reviewers were of different fields and different levels of education. Before presenting twice I was beyond nervous which reminded me exactly of the countless debate competitions I had prepared for back in high school. This was a different caliber of difficulty to adjust to because it was at a collegiate level. Interestingly enough although I was nervous before, once I started talking it was flowing well enough to where I was comfortable. I started regaining confidence and soon enough I was at a comfortable place to speak to my reviewer(s). This came the most natural to me because we had been preparing all semester on the topic of interest. During the design of the research poster the most difficult aspect was setting it up with enough topics for the entire SEA-PHAGES team. Since we had only isolated five novel phages it was difficult to find a story for everyone. Other than that we had figured out different concept posters and methodology posters. In addition, finding the materials was difficult since we had kept our lab notebooks elsewhere and could not reference them but rather an online inventory to work off of. We worked through that challenge by sitting down with our LAs and discussing it. The process of determining the aspects of research that would be highlighted on our poster was given to us in a listing format. Dr. Smith presented us with a list she saw fit and she assigned the five phages to those who collected them and then the concept/methodology to those who worked closely with the subject. For example my poster was on DNA extraction which was something I was already familiar with as well as my peaked interest during that portion of the experiment. URC was different from other presentations because as previously mentioned I was in LD debate as well as a Speaking for Business course. This was not completely different from debate but it was spontaneous, the questioning period was considerably like the cross-examination section of debate but the style of speaking was more conversational rather than being “grilled”. As for presentations during class, you are subjected to speaking in front of multiple people whereas during URC you have a smaller, more intimate audience. It is more informal yet still educational but the experience was similar to both debate and an in class presentation. Overall I enjoyed my first conference and hope to do it again in the future. The students I have worked with have given me such a good experience as well as meeting different reviewers in various fields. I am extremely grateful to be given this opportunity and I look forward to working with others in the future. Thank you TrUE Scholars for giving me the experience of a lifetime as I hope to continue on with research in future endeavors!