Today was truly the culmination of non-lab NIH. I get to the campus at 10am and I head straight towards building 45 where the poster presentations are at. I've looked at the program (located online) and I found out that Chris was presenting in the morning. He was surprised to see me, but it was good to see him one last time, learn about what he has been doing this whole summer at NCATS.
Then I had to rush back to building 35 (which was quite the walk/run...in flip flops) to print my poster, which took a decent amount of waiting time, and then I had to run back to building 45 to set up, change (good thing I was wearing tshirt and shorts, because I was sweating like crazy from all the walking I've done). I got there to see some posters in the lunch session, saw Michaela's poster on modifying procedures for nurses when gearing up to come in contact with Ebola patients, as well as Bronte's on magnetized gold bellflowers.
When it came the afternoon session (the session I was presenting at), no one showed up for the first 20 minutes, no one showed up. Then Bronte did, which was so nice of her. I didn't have a chance to practice presenting my poster, so it was good that Bronte was first because I could practice and there was no pressure. After she left, there was a long lull where I just stood there, and then a girl (a friend of the girl who's poster was next to mine) came and asked me to present. After her, it had been 40 minutes into the 2 hour session, I had only given my presentation twice, but my throat was dry and my voice was hoarse.
Chris was lurking while I was talking to the girl, waiting to jump in after she had left. I presented to him, and as I was talking to him, Jobart came and lurked alternating between coming, leaving, coming, leaving. But I'm really glad Jobart came because it was really thoughtful of him even though I know he was really busy. As he left for the final time, he gave me a thumbs up and a smile before walking away, which helped boost my confidence (already growing because I got to practice my spiels with different people), but also felt like validation of my presentation, that I was doing it right.
I managed to rope in this random Indian lady who was walking by (she was a research fellow, aka postdoc), and I hope she was intrigued. I felt a little better with my explanation, but it was still a little shaky. As I was talking to her, Jon and Nick came over and listened. It was really thoughtful of them to walk all the way from building 35 just to come see Deborah and me. Jon asked if the 5 receptors I was presenting were the only ones in mitophagy, I said yes, and he subtly shakes his head no (though later we talked about it and it turns out only 5 have been discovered but there may be more). I got really flustered and mad at myself and had to will myself to shrug it off and keep going with my presentation. The problem with presenting my poster is I realized how much I don't know and it woke up this strong desire to stay more weeks, stay the year, dedicate my life to research this topic, simply because there's so much to figure out and since my experiment didn't get the expected results, there's so much to figure out why it didn't work and how to make it work.
I ended up giving my talk 7 times and by the end of the two hours, my voice was so scratchy. My mentor lurked while I was giving a presentation and afterwards, he told me I did a good job presenting, which
Afterwards, I went back to the lab, met with Richard, and he said he'd be glad to have me back in the lab next year and in the future! So I definitely have an in with this lab, and I'm glad I have an invitation to come back!
It was a great day, presenting my poster, a culmination of my whole summer here, getting invited back in the future to my lab, and meeting friends I've made this summer, learning about their research and seeing them one last time before possibly never again.
Thank you Chris, Michaela, Bronte, and many other interns for making my summer here fun. Your posters (and presentation of them) blew me away. It's too bad that you can't start any follow up steps tomorrow!
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