Grad Diary 11/19/09

I just took a trip up to Ithaca this week to talk about graduate school, and it was a great trip. I had made a trip back to Ithaca at the beginning of the fall to visit some friends and old professors. While there the director of the Honors Program, Bob Sullivan, asked me if I was interested in making a return to trip to talk to the first year honors students about applying to graduate school. I thought about it and over the next few weeks we worked out the details. Since I was already going to be on campus I e-mailed the department chairs for biology and chemistry to see if they wanted me to do the same for them, and they were thrilled. So, Tuesday night I found myself driving up to Ithaca and checking into a hotel room already paid for by the honors program and enjoying the irony of being invited back as a "guest" when I haven't been out of school for more than six months. It was very surreal...and kind of cool.

My talks were at noon (for the honors kids) and at 4:00pm (for the science kids). I spent the morning and afternoon between those times running all over campus stopping into professor's offices and catching up. It was very hectic. The talks themselves went well, though I will be honest and say that I was more excited and gave a better overall presentation to the science kids, because I could focus exclusively on my own experiences (which were still pretty fresh). The turn out was small, but I wasn't expecting much (having recently graduated). Still, the students who did come seemed to have gotten a lot out of my presentation, and actually one of the professors asked if i would send him a copy of my presentation for him to use with his own students, which I thought was pretty awesome.

It was a great trip all in all, and I am looking forward to making more in the future, especially once I've gotten some research under my belt and can actually present some science!