National Student Research Forum

Oh. That's me. In front of a poster. 

I spent half of my week in (sometimes) sunny (but always hot and humid) Galveston at the National Student Research Forum. Both stressfully and luckily for me, I presented my poster right away on Thursday morning after arriving late Wednesday night. No time for nerves! I think it went alright. Here's a picture of me looking awesome in front of my poster....

We hung around for several hours to listen to some speakers and also to listen to CeCelia do her oral presentation. She is from Maine, goes to Brandeis now for her Masters degree, but spent a month in Nebraska with Dr. E doing research in the same clinic I worked in. I actually collected data for the second trial of her longitudinal study last summer while I was working in clinic. Anyway, she killed her oral presentation and I was super proud of her (Go CeCelia!).

After the speakers, we headed to Gaido's for dinner. It's a family-owned restaurant that has been in Galveston for over 100 years and it's SUPER delicious.

Cajun crawfish fondue

Goat cheese beignets

This was my meal. Grilled scallops
and blackened shrimp.

We had a breakout session on grant writing (like to the NIH) that we went to. The speaker said "The most important part of grant writing is actually writing well". And then she suggested that many of the applicants aren't able to do that and that might be why they don't get the grants. In that moment I was SO proud of my liberal arts education at Hastings College and especially proud of my degree in religion. Newsflash, science isn't everything! The humanities matter too. Later she was talking about in research they'd like you to have a straight trajectory of research interest. It's interesting to me that I have been inundated with the exact opposite information at UNMC (which is apparently not true for my Uni of Texas Med peers).

Once again, I am so proud to be part of the UNMC family.

We are good physicians, but first we are good people. We are frequently encouraged not only to do well in our course work, but also to do good within the community. To have something that makes us interesting outside of classes. Whether it's volunteering at the NE Humane Society or running marathons (PS GOOO Suzanne for rocking the Boston Marathon on Monday!) or even involvement in extracurriculars at school. And I think this is so, so, so important for taking care of patients. Just one more reason that UNMC is an amazing school!

Enough blabbering about my love for UNMC. We also headed to the beach, stopped for Rita's ice (they use margarita machines to shave ice and mix it with ice cream flavors...holy yum!) and I even did some studying by the pool. PS has anyone ever had their pen explode on them on an airplane? I have. Conveniently it was purple ink and I could not figure out how to get it off. I looked like a purple people eater during my presentation...maybe the judges thought I had a strange skin disease...?

Beach!

Water was pretty warm...
not Jamaica warm, but I didn't freeze!

Rita's shaved ice

Purple people eater...!

...or a skin disease? 

The poster.