So, last week was a bit busy trying to work with my first poster presentation of my research. The way conferences work, you typically make a 4′ x 5′ poster that summarizes the background behind what you’re doing, and then presents data that you can then describe to passers-by. This is a way at conferences to get your data out there without having to have everyone do a 15 min presentation (although, that’s an option, too). Tends to be very informal and is an excellent way to get started.
Anyway, the Graduate Student Association (GSA) at SLU holds a Graduate Research Symposium once a year where they have everyone submit posters and abstracts to you can present your data to your fellow classmates, and also get them judged by professors at the school. From my perspective, this is an excellent opportunity to get experience before the Neuroscience meeting in November (in San Diego!), which will be my first real meeting. The cool thing about that experience, as compared with the GSA symposium, is that those people will be quite familiar with the basics of the research field, while some of the judges at the symposium yesterday were from the social sciences department, requiring you to define “neuron” or “oxidative stress” to them. 60 students presented posters yesterday for a good three hours and most of the people coming by were professors, rather than students, but that’s to be expected, I guess.
Anyway, I think I did a decent job, overall…certainly for a first-timer. The data I had wasn’t terribly involved compared with other students there, and I’m not even sure I explained it all in the best way either, but regardless, I felt it helped me out in the long-run.