This weekend was exceptionally academic for me. It was the Undergraduate Research Conference and I must say that I am blown away at the amount of research our little school has produced! So much of it wasn't even just a long analysis of the stuff that already exists, but brand spanking new research. Those geography and biology kids are nuts at it! Using never-before-seen maps and new growth experiments, they're really making headway in research. History students were I think the largest contingent present and were really good at doing new research with government documents, newspaper articles and other neat sources.
For the most part, everyone was a really good sport about the whole thing. There was no level of competition evident, at least, everyone was fair about it. Except for this one knob who "thought I really had the best paper, but I guess not". Way to be a part of the experience and be happy for others.
I would suggest in future years that others attending the sessions vote for who they thought did the best presentation. There was one I attended that I won't call foul on who won because of the moderator...but I'm going to call foul on who won because of the moderator. Inter-disciplinary sessions are great, but perhaps the value of others' research doesn't come across with certain moderators. I think if there was a vote, this would aid in awards. This is not to say that ONLY the votes would count, but at Model NATO the way it works is that the group nominates their favourite and the committee chair has their favourites and they work it out in some sort of democratic way. I think this would work too. In all fairness, this is probably not the way real conferences work, but I still think this would be a good idea.
All in all, it was a great experience and I'm so much more confident with my class presentation now that I've done it in front of a bunch of professors and other smart students. Now all I have to do is write another 15 pages on it. Huzzah.
For the most part, everyone was a really good sport about the whole thing. There was no level of competition evident, at least, everyone was fair about it. Except for this one knob who "thought I really had the best paper, but I guess not". Way to be a part of the experience and be happy for others.
I would suggest in future years that others attending the sessions vote for who they thought did the best presentation. There was one I attended that I won't call foul on who won because of the moderator...but I'm going to call foul on who won because of the moderator. Inter-disciplinary sessions are great, but perhaps the value of others' research doesn't come across with certain moderators. I think if there was a vote, this would aid in awards. This is not to say that ONLY the votes would count, but at Model NATO the way it works is that the group nominates their favourite and the committee chair has their favourites and they work it out in some sort of democratic way. I think this would work too. In all fairness, this is probably not the way real conferences work, but I still think this would be a good idea.
All in all, it was a great experience and I'm so much more confident with my class presentation now that I've done it in front of a bunch of professors and other smart students. Now all I have to do is write another 15 pages on it. Huzzah.
If Nip U students don't try and save the tadpoles, who will?
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