Bad blogger, busy blogger

Unfortunately, I've been pretty busy lately preparing for our holiday, so I haven't had enough time to write in my blog. I've had a few interesting stories to tell, but little time to write them. In any case, I'll try to make up for it by posting now, however I'm going to be busy still in the next few days, so it might be empty hereafter for awhile. Stay tuned for when I get back from our holiday and I'll have lots of interesting things to write!

Yesterday, myself and the other graduate students in my department partook in a scientific retreat. It's held at a camp outside of town and is based on graduate students presenting their own research in a friendly forum. I have been involved in the organization of the retreat for the past two years, this year serving as the chair of the science committee. This means I'm involved in selecting abstracts for oral or poster presentation. As well, I also MC'ed the presentations along with a post-doc. Lastly, I gave an oral presentation myself in the category for senior students (no, I didn't select myself for the presentation, other people on the science committee did). So, I was right involved in the event.

The most exciting part of the day, though, was the fact that I was one of the winners for best oral presentation! Hooray! I don't even feel it was my best talk ever, since I realized too late that I hadn't quite set the background information to the appropriate level for my audience. Instead, I had to top up the background information just by talking the crowd through it, rather than following my slides precisely. In any case, my prize for winning is $100!! Score! That will go towards my upcoming holiday.

Other than that, the day was fairly uneventful and went quite smoothly. After the retreat the students remained at the camp for the night, for revelry and campfire fun. It was a good time, although most of us didn't get enough sleep!