Bairoil, Wyoming - Elevation 6800 ft, Population 106

As soon as my internship was over, I loaded up all my stuff and headed west. On the way I dropped off everything I wouldn't need at my grandparents house in Iowa. They both are awesome in letting me store it there for the month that I will be home until I will have to move it all back to Indiana for the fall.

My first stop for summer vacation is Bairoil, Wyoming in order to see my boyfriend Tim. Now most people know and realize how far away Colorado, Wyoming, as well as other western states are from Michigan. The long distance (1,345 miles) usually means a few days drive. Well the beast that I think I am, decided that I could do it in 2 days, rather than a modest 3. The plan was that I would get to my grandparents house the first day and rather than stopping at my aunt's house in Omaha, Nebraska, on the second day, I would just drive straight through. Yes. I know. 14 hours straight from Iowa to Wyoming, with just me and my rabbit named Peter. (ya, he came along for the car ride. no animals at grandma's house) The poor rabbit and stupid Michigan roads. He was so scared he just sat in his litter box the entire way from Michigan to Iowa. Nebraska roads are the best, in which he was a lot more comfortable and relaxed a little more.

Upon arriving, with the help of Tim's sister, we were able to come up with a plan of surprise. Turns out it worked! I not only surprised him a little ( a few hours), but by about 2 days. It was great, considering I was able to arrive during the weekend so that we would have some time to do fun stuff before his work week.

Now for those that have never imagined a town like Bairoil, it is on the smaller side with 106 people (maybe), no services (no gas, or food, stores, nothing), lots of oil, and its closest neighboring town (larger ones) Rawlins, which is about 40 minutes away. While some might complain about the size and such, it is so beautiful out here. I have really missed the west. It has the roaming hills, and mountains, and SPACE. The lack of people is compensated in space, and I don't mind one bit. You can see up to 60 miles away, its really quite breath taking.

For the first week of my actual summer, this little town is what I need to not only get back to the area I know but force me to take a break from everything. For those that know me, you're like suuuurrrreee Sara, like you're really taking a break. And you're right, but compared to most of the time, it's probably as close as I will get.  

Presentation Time - Explaining the details, with very few details.

When participating in Mid-SURE, as required by the EnSURE program as well as others, the student presenters were asked to evaluate 4 other posters outside of their presentation time blocks. The goal was to to give everyone a chance to present their research and to fill up the hour long period with constant talking. Due to the size of the event, there was many different science fields showing their research such as some social science, biology, microbiology, all of the engineering disciplines, etc. Therefore, it was not surprising to be asked to evaluate a poster from a science discipline that was different from your own. It was however, challenging.

If there is one thing that always confuses me about the science world is criticism from groups with little to no understanding of your topic of research or study. I understand the importance of collaboration and how cool it is to learn some new things in different areas. However, I have a hard time evaluating the effectiveness of ...lets say research on flies and their reactions to spiders if I have no background in the topic. Sure, I can learn some information from the presentation I might not be familiar with, but as far as grading it to see how well the research project was conducted .... it is not very easy for me to form an opinion let alone an accurate one considering my background is not biology.( I did have to evaluate a presentation on flies and their reaction to spiders as one of my four evaluations. Not easy for a mechanical.) 

Another main difficultly in judging someones research, besides lack in background knowledge, is visualizing the big picture surrounding the research and its role. It can be difficult in your own field, let alone a field that is unfamiliar. Part of the research I completed this summer was creating a website that hosts a user manual for a software particular to the cardiovascular field. While the website seems simple (it really is), it is actually very significant to the field. I published another method of using the software that other researchers can not only use, but modify and build upon. This big picture, being the important part of my presentation, was really difficult to describe to those evaluating me. It wasn't hard for me to explain, but because of their background I felt they got caught up in the wrong details. Thus, it made it hard for them to understand how the project I completed fits in the cardiovascular field. 

After the event we received the evaluations written by the evaluators and I was shocked by my results. I thought that my project was fairly straight forward. The areas where I was the most surprised were those related to that big picture idea I mentioned. One of the judges gave me a 1 out of 5 (5 being the best) in my explanation of future works and contributions. This was confusing because I know I talked for about 10 minutes as well as having my poster mention that the website will be used in classes at MSU. I also mentioned how they are hoping to add a discussion forum on the site or link it to one so that researchers that use the software can share their implementation ideas more easily. However, like I mentioned before I think the reason behind the score isn't that I mentioned it or not, its the amount of background understanding of the audience and trying to absorb everything about the topic in order to make a judgment.  

Not all my scores were bad, most were average or above. I personally felt I did better, and was disappointed that it wasn't reflected. But I took my scores with a grain of salt. I concluded that for a decent amount of understanding of anything, a poster and short presentation just wasn't going to cut it.  

Presentation Time - Just a little voluntary exercise beforehand, no need to worry.

My research experience this summer came to an end the last week of July. In order to complete the program all of the undergraduates in EnSURE had to participate in Mid-SURE. (Someone likes acronyms) Mid-SURE is the Mid-Michigan Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experience that takes place at the Breslin Center at MSU. For those not familiar, the Breslin Center is the MSU basketball arena located on the far west side of campus.

The event hosts 300 (ish) undergraduate research students from about 9 different institutions from around the country to present their summer research. There are also quite a few programs represented; those 300 students aren't all from the EnSURE program.

I was sick the last 2 weeks of work. (Literally sounded like a man when I talked) Therefore, on the day of the event, my first plan of action was to look as professional as possible so that I could somehow fool my audience into thinking I wasn't really that sick. It was time to pull out my suit. If I couldn't be a 100% on top of my game at least I was going to look like I was. After making the effort to appear professional, I arrived at the Breslin in order to set up my poster before the presentation time. I retrieved my poster from the front desk and unrolled it only to find that it was the incorrect and unedited version. Since I was sick, I really didn't want to care, but I was forced to to because I was to be graded on how perfect the poster was organized. So I headed back to the front and tried to explain where they went wrong. The lady in charge, promptly handed me her phone to call DECS. (DECS is the engineering computer support division, and because of my 3D printing project this summer, they know me well)

Background on why the poster was the incorrect version: (the week and a few days before the event)

There was an original deadline for the poster so that DECS could print all 300 of them in time. The deadline then got moved to 2 days later because DECS said that they worked at lighting speed. So I turned in my poster by the second deadline. That following Friday I received an email saying that they (EnSURE) didn't get my poster and couldn't send it to DECS to be printed. I then sent them an email saying I turned it in, and then sent them an updated copy of my poster just in case. I never heard back, so the next week (week of the event) I went to DECS and asked if they had received my poster. At first they were like "I'm sure we have it, and that it is just with all of the others." I then asked them to check and then found that they didn't have it. So the guy that was helping me offered to print it right then. I got on the computer, created another updated version and was told I was good to go and that it would be at the event. From that point on I thought I was in the clear.

Going back to the day of the event. I was on the phone with DECS and it was mentioned that there was still time to print the poster before the presentations started. In my suit and all, I walked as fast as possible without breaking too much of a sweat to the Engineering building. (0.6 miles east) I arrived at the DECS office, said "hey, I was just on the phone with one of you and I came to print my poster." Then one of the very polite DECS guys that I has helped me quite a few times this summer asks " Alright, Do you have an engineering account?" Even though I have gone in there almost every day all summer, they still can't remember me, let alone that I am a fellow engineering student. (Maybe it was the suit) So after the nice guy helped get my poster loaded and printed in about 10 minutes, I headed back to the Breslin. (0.6 miles west) I arrived at the event center with 15 minutes to spare before I had to present in which I spent each minute putting my appearance back in order before judgement time.

BAM! In the first 4 hours before the event started I had already walked mile or two, managed to undo half of work I put into getting dressed that morning, and was still sick. But hey, my poster was on the stand 15 minutes ahead of schedule without any flaw.