Conference Summary

Whew! I made it. Conference complete. I don't have the mental energy to put together paragraphs, so I beg your indulgence for bullet points.

- On my own personal scorecard, the winner of the best title of paper at the conference: Pendulum Animal Impact Testing. That threw me for a loop so much that I looked up the paper just to see what it was about. From the abstract: "The authors have developed a pendulum test incorporating an animal dummy to generate similar roof deformation to that experienced in real world animal impact accidents." Well, I guess somebody has to do it...

- My presentation this morning (at 8am - yeek!) went quite well, I thought. There were more hands up with questions than I had time to answer at the end of the talk. That either means people were interested, or people couldn't understand what in the world I was talking about. I'm hoping the former.

- I met two professors from World's Best School here, and met up with four other World's Best School students. My school was well-represented!

- I spent my days in sessions listening to talks, but in the evenings I was left to my own devices. Two nights I had to work (although I'm not actually AT school this week, homework is still due....) but two other nights I spent socializing. I was worried about the meet-and-greet type stuff, but it turned out to be quite enjoyable and I met some really great students.



- Wednesday night all of us World's Best School students went out for a nice dinner. I was acquaintances with these students (knew their faces from the department) before this conference but I'd never gotten to know them. Turns out they are fascinating people, and we had great dinner conversation. Also, the food was divine. We went to a Greek restaurant run by Cat Cora (of Iron Chef fame on the Food Network). Every dish we ordered was sublime. Perfectly seasoned, unique but balanced recipes. Delicious! I got the "Traditional Whole Fish"



and fortunately, the restaurant staff was available to show me how to filet the fish - I didn't know how to eat what was on my plate.... Now I'm an expert! We all sampled each other's dishes (fisherman's stew, rack of lamb) and although they were all excellent, we agreed mine was the best.

- I got to soak up the sun one afternoon out by the pool, and then slip into the hot tub after the sun went down. I could practically feel the stress melt away... I tried to store up as much sun as possible before I head back to the New England winter!

- I walked out and about one afternoon, and there was an outdoor magician putting on a show. I stopped to watch, and enjoyed feeling like a little kid again.

- The food situation at the conference was terrible. Bad planning all around - the logistics were all screwed up. On Monday, they ran out of food after half an hour (in an hour and a half lunch slot). I was in line, and had to wait 15 minutes before they showed up with more sandwiches. Then just as I was about to get to the front of the line, they ran out again. Another 15 minute wait, and they came out with pasta. I got one meager spoonfull (on a dessert-sized plate) and a pack of chips, and that was all for lunch. Boo.

Then Tuesday, you got a choice of sandwiches. I chose the roasted pepper wrap, and it turned out to be this tiny little burrito sized thing. Whereas the people who wanted Philly Cheese Steak got huge subs. Unfair!

On Wednesday, there was no choice of food - and just as I got to the front of the line at my station, that station ran out. Everybody in line had to move over to a different station and wait in line all over again.

Then finally today, they didn't run out of food (it was hamburgers). But the problem was they lined everybody up in two lines to get the hamburger. Then they put one table with condiments (lettuce, tomato, ketchup, that sort of thing) to one side of the serving lines, requiring you to pass THROUGH the line to get to the condiments. Then because there was only one table, there was a bottleneck and the queue backed up into the hamburger line and caused a huge mess. Then to get your drink, you had to go back to the other side of the room (again, THROUGH the hamburger line). And then there were no tables to sit at.

Bah. For an engineering conference, nobody thought to count number of registrants and compare to the number of sandwiches? Or was there no systems engineer able to work out logisitcal queueing flow? AND there was no coffee available after 9am. Really? Coffee should be available at a near-constant rate, I think. There's STUDENTS attending, for crying out loud...

- I looked good at this conference. I had to buy a couple pairs of dress pants and shirts last week for this purpose (I haven't worn dress clothes in a while, and I've lost weight so my old things don't fit). I wanted to get a suit, but I couldn't find one on short notice that fit me well. Despite that, I felt very confident and svelte in my sharp clothes. Nothing like a black pencil skirt, crisp white button down and kitten heels to put a spring in your step. They were partly bought with birthday money, so thank you to family for that!


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So other than the food, a successful experience all the way around. I have a pocket full of business cards of people doing things relevant to my work (although I have none to give them), and I've been inspired to try a few new things in my own research. Tomorrow it's home again, home again, jiggety jig!

Always Forget Something

Every trip I take, I always manage to forget exactly one item. Doesn’t matter how many lists I make, how early I pack, how much I re-check my bag, or how many extra things I bring – there will always be one thing missing. So I have relegated myself to just making sure that one item is not a critical item. So far, I’ve never forgotten anything I truly need.

This trip, the only thing I forgot was business cards. A bummer, but most students don’t have business cards anyway so I can get along. I’ve been listening to a never-ending parade of presentations since I’ve been here (it’s my job to attend talks and network, you know) and occasionally there will be one that is relevant enough I’d like to keep in touch with the speaker. So I usually wait until the end of the session, introduce myself, and ask a few questions about the presentation. If I’d like to follow up later, I’ll ask for a business card.

The only time I’ve felt bad about not having contact information is when I speak to presenters from Asian countries. The culture, it turns out, is quite different there. Relationships and pecking orders are highly important, as are (it turns out) business cards. The presentation of business cards is almost a ritualistic affair. I first learned this when I went to Japan in undergrad – it’s customary to accept the business card with a bow (the depth of the bow depending on your relationship to the giver), hold it in both hands and carefully look at it before putting it away. Here in America, those customs are relaxed, but the business card is still important.

So when I wanted to send one speaker from Japan a note afterwards to discuss how his work could be helpful to my work, I asked for his email. He insisted that he have contact information from me as well, so I wrote my name and email on a slip of paper and handed it to him. I felt rather embarrassed as I watched how he carefully accepted the torn slip, read it, and placed it neatly inside his suit jacket.

I mean, if I thought it was going to be that important to him, I would have at least torn the edges STRAIGHT….

But all in all, an acceptable item to forget. I have latptop, presentation, ID, money, and business clothes – since I bought a good book in the gift shop, I may not even need to come home. J

From My Hotel in Sunny, Warm Conference City

This week I am attending a conference (at which I have a paper to present) in a beautiful, touristy city with highs in the 80s all this week. I am here by myself (advisor opted out of this one), and I intend to fully enjoy all the networking and all the sightseeing I can possibly cram in.

Just this evening I wandered down to the hotel lobby to try and rustle up some dinner (avoiding expensive room service at all costs). I was complaining in my head that it's actually rather hard to eat when you are only one person - it's awkward to go to a sit-down place by your lonesome, but there aren't any fast food places close to this hotel. And just then, I ran into a colleague of mine from World's Best School. How cool - and what fortunate happenstance! He is here with his labmate, and they each have papers to present at this conference.

So the three of us went to dinner, after finding a suitable place (how many engineers does it take to read a map... gees...). I got along really well with the two of them, and it certainly makes travel more enjoyable to have familiar faces to socialize with. After paying an exorbitant amount for a modest dinner and a sad-looking banana, we made plans to scout out a grocery store tomorrow evening to stock up on fruit.

So cheers to friends in all places -

A poem for your pleasure

I must share with you a poem that my brother composed and sent to me. I adore my brother, and his quirky sense of humor tickles me pink. He was emailing to me and my sister with a request for style advice:

I need some clothes that would a woman render,
Helpless to my charms, but still not offend her,
So that willingly her heart she might dutifully surrender,
For this I need assistance from the female gender!

Now how can a sister not respond to that?

There is a shopping trip coming Christmas, I promise you bud!

Meeting Goals

Today I happen to be very pleased with myself. I've always been a self-driven type of person, and it pleases me when I meet goals I set for myself (it's also good to meet goals other people set, such as schoolwork goals, but that's not as fun). Today I have met two goals at once - booyah!

You might recall I'm in a medical study that tracks how many calories I eat, and that monitoring has led to some weight loss. I've been continuing to try and make healthy choices, and I am pleased to say that I have lost (and kept off for a couple months now) exactly 20 lbs. Yea!

I feel much better, and my graph looks good too...

And, to make today even better, I have met my savings goal. I am fortunate to have parents who impressed upon me the importance of being prudent with my finances, so I have always tried to spend and save wisely. My goal for this semester was to gather $1k in savings, and as of this morning (with a few cents of interest putting me over the edge....) I have $1000.01 in my savings account. I know that seems like a small amount to anyone who has a real job, but it means a lot to me. My credit card is paid in full every month, I have a chunk of money invested, and I have started a (quite small so far) retirement account.

Onward and upward!

Generating Innovative Ideas

Last week one of the professors in the Mechanical Engineering department was awarded a prestigious award for Teaching Innovation.

I attended his lecture, at which he was given the award. His talk was on how he encourages innovation through his teaching techniques. It was really interesting, I thought. He talked about how it is always better to learn through doing than to learn through simply listening. Of course DOING takes more resources and more time than just LECTURING, so we are fortunate to be at a school with the means to accomplish this.

One specific example he gave was the freshman class he teaches on design. One class period is on writing specs. Writing specs means to carefully record the steps or procedures for a given process. It's usually a dreadfully boring process, tedious and detail-oriented. But this professor breaks students into teams, gives them pieces of fruit and has them write specs on how to dissect it. Then, the student teams swap specs and try to guess the piece of fruit that the unknown spec was written to dissect.

One day the Dean of the MechE department was giving tours to parents of freshman. The Dean took them by the classroom (happens to have glass windows, like a lab) to view the lecture. It happened to be the "writing specs" lecture, and the students looked so engrossed the parents didn't even want to interrupt! The most boring lecture topic of all, and the students looked to busy to disturb!

During this lecture I was attending on teaching innovation, the professor did an "in-class exercise" of sorts, to illustrate a point. He handed out pieces of paper and told us to write for four minutes and list as many ideas as we could on "how to save money at World's Best School." The faculty all laughed, because we have been going through recession-related budget cuts, and the topic hit a little close to home...

After four minutes, we all turned in our papers. While the professor continued talking, three of his students looked over the papers. Further along in the lecture, the professor declared the "winner" of the contest. The criteria turned out to be (and we didn't know this) how many ideas you wrote down. The winner had 30 ideas. I had perhaps six.

"So how do you come up with that many ideas? How was that person so creative?" asked the professor, "And can that be TAUGHT?"

One of the techniques he teaches in his classes to encourage proliferate ideas is to come at the problem from different viewpoints. So if, for instance, you are trying to think of ways to improve student life - think about dorm life, food on campus, extracurricular activities, mentoring available, sports offered, student clubs. Generate as many ideas in each category as you can.

I thought that was useful. Breaking a vague problem up into smaller digestible segments seems like the right way to go.

The professor also mentioned other techniques, but the kicker came at the end of the lecture.

In his last couple minutes, he held up the "winner" of the ideas contest - the one with the 30 ideas. And it turns out, that person had done just as he said. There were four or five categories of saving money, and ideas under each category.

Maybe he had a plant. :)

Massage Class

Way back in January, I wrote a list of classes I'd like to take, and things I want to do. I'm at a point in life where I'm as free and unencumbered as I ever will be, and I want to take advantage of it.

Well, I took the archery class. And I loved it.

Now I'm continuing to tick off things on the "wishes" post. I'm taking a second-quarter class in massage. It started three weeks ago, and it goes every Monday for eight weeks until the end of the semester.

I'm really enjoying it! I had my doubts on the first day of class - the teacher is your stereotypical alternative-medicine advocate, with the wild mane of frizzy hair, long loopy scarves and full skirts in earth tones. She urged us to be "open-minded," to pay attention to "the healing power of touch," the "magnetic forces between all objects," and to "set our intentions in prayer before laying on your hands." Oh my. And I knew it was going to be a hard sell, because she told us that "If you are looking for scientific proof," and here she mentioned that more people at World's Best School have asked about scientific studies than anywhere else she has worked, "then this is the wrong class for you."

Um, yeah. You expected to try and teach a bunch of engineers and scientists about neti pots without any supporting evidence? She must have seen the skeptical looks, because the next week she brought in photocopies of an article. Except it was from Wikipedia.

Nice try.

This week, she brought in a couple studies from more reputable sources, and you could tell everybody breathed a little easier. We students like our data, thank you very much.

But the spiritual bent aside, our teacher is certified in a variety of types of massage (including prenatal massage, how cool!) and has been practicing for nearly twenty years. She is very knowledgeable, and has organized lesson plans for us to follow.

Each lesson lasts two hours. It starts with our teacher explaining the techniques we will learn, and showing us anatomy charts where appropriate. She then demonstrates on a volunteer, and then we pair off and try the techniques ourselves on each other. It's a wonderful system - it means I get a free massage every week!

The first week we learned compression and traction. In my own head, every time I think about it I think "compression and tension," but that's my engineering bias coming in there.... :) Compression is just what it sounds like - pressing into the body with the palms of your hands. It's very simple, feels good, and is soothing. A good opening stroke, says the teacher. Traction is stretching - the arms away from the body, the ankles away from the spine, and the head from the shoulders. Well, not TOO far away from the shoulders. We also learned effleurage (long sweeping strokes), and petrissage (kneading).

The second week we covered head and neck massage. I found this very odd - I never have people touching my face. But I paired up with a spunky girl that I really enjoyed working with - we had fun especially with the scalp massage. We laughed that the boys were having a hard time dealing with girl's curly hair...

This week we did abdomen massage. This is the teacher's specialty, as she does a majority of her work in pregnant and post-pregnant women. We learned how to feel your partner's breathing, and to gently release tension in the stomach and hip muscles. One particular technique involves pressing straight down into your partner's belly button. Here you can most strongly feel the pulse, because major veins and arteries run through your middle. The teacher said that according to traditional Chinese massage (or was it Mayan?) the naval chakra is the strongest, and the pulse here is a measure of your vitality.

Well, it turns out that my pulse is ridiculously strong. It scared my partner. "Why is your belly MOVING?" she cried. We had the teacher come over to ensure that no strange growths were occurring in my stomach, and fortunately no, I am not abnormal. I just have a combination of a really strong pulse and really strong abs (thank you abs workout class!), so my poor partner couldn't even feel what she was supposed to.

Up next week for Miss Vitality: neck massage! I can't wait.