Summer research is finally over. I’ve spent the past two days attending a math conference hosted by Central Michigan University and am now sitting in the airport at Atlanta, all set to wrap up my long 10-hour trek home. What made me really crazy was when I passed through security and the first gate that I saw had a direct flight from Lansing to Minneapolis. It left at 7:30 AM which would have worked perfectly since we had a group leaving Central Michigan at 5:30. But no, I wasn’t on that flight. Then, when I arrived in Cincinatti, the first thing I heard over the intercom was that the flight to Minneapolis was ready to begin boarding. Once again, I wasn’t on that flight. Instead, I took the flightplan that goes from Lansing to Cincinnati to Atlanta to Minneapolis. Oh well, I guess I get to explore the country a bit.
At first, I thought that the conference would be very boring. At least it started off as uneventful. I had no issues traveling to Michigan. I flew separate from the rest of the Richmond group since I booked my own flights. However, the rest of my group was not so lucky. We had:
1. One of my research partners had his luggage lost at the airport
2. My other research partner lost all of her luggage that she had for the next month.
3. One person flew on his own from his home in Philadelphia, but missed his flight in Detroit, so a professor who drove to the conference from Richmond had to stop by Detroit to pick him up.
4. Another researcher had his CARRY-ON baggage lost. It was a really small plane and so he had to leave his garment bag and other small possessions for the crew to store in the plane’s underbelly before getting on the plane. Somehow, in the 50 feet between the airplane’s door and luggage compartment, all of his clothes and possessions were lost. This was one of the strangest airport stories I’ve heard in some time.
Through my independent travels, though, I happened to meet students from Olin College, another school that was attending the conference. Honestly, I thought they were a bit strange at first. They talked about math and theorems for fun and seemed to have rather strange social skills, if you know what I mean. I didn’t think I was like them at all. However, the more that I got to know them throughout the conference, whether by going out to eat together, discussing our projects, or just hanging out, the more my opinion of them changed. Actually, my favorite event from the conference was with them. We spent the last night playing over two hours of Charades followed by three hours of Taboo. It was a really great time. In all, there were five schools there: Coppin State, Sam Houston State, Olin, Central Michigan, and us. I would say that a lot of us became really good friends. Yes, we may not exactly be typical teenagers. I mean, what “normal” teenager decides to spend almost their entire summer doing math research? However, I guess I’m not as different from them as I thought.
Meeting new people while playing Taboo. Ben was a hilarious person.
Making friends with students from other colleges
The actual conference went well. Central Michigan was a great host. The had fantastic dorms and food for us. Every possible break, they had trays of fruit, cookies, breads, and so much more and it was all delicious. I easily think that it ruined several of my trips to the gym. For the actual conference portion, there were eight 30-minute presentations. They were a huge range of topics, from oscillations in blood flow to time-minimizing curves to increased efficiency in wireless communication to knot theory to Hadaran matrices to the history of mathematics in America. My group’s presentation went really well. We received many compliments and my mentor said that he received a lot of compliments on the PowerPoint that I had created for it. Some of the others weren’t as interesting and very hard to follow, but there were several others that were quite fascinating. The remaining groups all had a chance to show off their work during a poster session.
A presentation on “Sequence Design in Wireless Communication”
Kosh presents her research on chaos
The conference was a good experience and a great way to end the summer and I do think that my presentation skills have come a long way. The friends were great and there were lots of fun times. It’s great to end on a happy note. I think I may have actually had my views of summer change over the past few weeks and days. I didn’t like it in the beginning, but when I look at everything as a whole, I am glad for it. However, that could me be seeing it through rose-colored glasses. Still, I’m so anxious to get home. I sent home a list of foods that I’ve been missing and I’m ready to have some of them. My friends from high school have been calling me and asking me to come hang out and all I can say is “Soon”. There is so much that I want to do, but so little time. I’ll tell you all about my adventures after I’ve been home for a while.
Leaving my summer research office for the last time
Quote of the Week: “The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.” -Joe Ancis
Thought to Ponder: If nothing sticks on Teflon, how do they make Teflon stick to the pan?
Shout Outs: My new friends from the LURE Conference
YouTube Video of the Week:
And I thought I was a bad skierÂ
