Rose here –
Attending professional conferences can be a lot of fun. I have had the opportunity as a graduate student to attend several geology conferences around the country, but the first conference I attended was as an undergraduate senior geology major, and it set me on the course to pursuing graduate school.
Conferences for many professional organizations move around to different cities from year to year, making it easier for people in different regions to attend. During my senior year as an undergraduate, the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, just a few hours’ drive from my university, Central Washington University. Because of this, our department encouraged as many students to go as were able, since it was so close that we would not have to pay for plane tickets or other large travel expenses. There are several scholarships and travel grants available to students who are presenting research to attend professional conferences, but since I did not participate in a research project as an undergrad I was not able to receive this type of funding. To keep costs down, many of the students and professors from my department carpooled up to Vancouver and we crammed as many students as we could into a cheap hotel room a few blocks from the conference center.
Once we got to Vancouver and got settled in our hotel rooms, it was easy to see that this was the perfect place for a geology conference. It was my first time in Vancouver and I fell totally in love with the views. There were beautiful forested green mountains coming down right into the harbor. It was easy to imagine the subduction of the Farallon plate under the North American plate, forming the tall, (geologically) young mountains, followed by the giant glacial ice sheets covering the area during the last ice age and then retreating to leave behind such a beautiful landscape for us to enjoy.
During the conference, I was able to attend many interesting talks and poster presentations on a wide variety of geological topics, including paleontology, planetary geology, structural geology (earthquakes and tectonics), volcanology (volcanoes!), and metamorphic petrology (studying rocks that have been heated and transformed under high pressure without being totally melted). I was delighted to find that there were so many people studying so many interesting facets of geology, and was inspired to check out some ways to get involved in research myself.
There were many events happening during the week of GSA, some specifically aimed at students, and I attended as many of these as I could. Most were free or very affordable ($5-$15) for student attendees. There were a few networking events such as career lunches with professionals with jobs in industry (e.g., oil & gas), government, and academia. These lunches usually included a panel discussion or Q&A, followed by time to just mingle and talk to professionals and fellow students. Most GSA technical divisions (Structural Geology, Sedimentology, Planetary, etc.) had formal business meetings and social events (often combined) during the week of GSA. Some of these were free and some were ticketed, though if they charged they likely had a reduced rate for students. I found that these meetings were a good way to meet folks in fields of geology I thought I was interested in, and most of the people there loved to talk to students about what they do. One of my favorite events at GSA every time I’ve been is the Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG) networking breakfast. This is their annual business meeting, but also a way to get a good breakfast and meet other women geoscientists during the conference.
The exhibit and poster hall was one of the biggest rooms I had ever seen. There were hundreds of poster presentations of people’s work. This was a good way to spend time if I had an hour or two free. Walking around and looking at all the posters was a fun way to learn a lot about branches of geology that I knew very little about. There were also quite a lot of exhibitor booths for universities, geological equipment manufacturers, and various companies that hire geologists. Many of them were giving away free stuff (bookmarks, flash drives, pens), so it was fun to go around and see what I could get. I also loved walking around to all the booths for university geology programs and talking to students from other schools.
As a result of being exposed to all this cool science, I ended up applying to grad school for geology, and am now in the last semester of my Master’s degree! If you are an undergraduate (or even high school student) interested in science and you have the opportunity to attend a science conference in your area I highly recommend it.
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