I honestly thought I would have been blogging about the (two) conferences more than this, but I've honestly been too busy being exhausted and having a ton of fun. Just a quick recap of the weeks events:
The Richard Tapia conference started on Sunday. It was really good (if for no other reason) for all the people I met. Because it was a smaller crowd (about 400 people), you really got to know and sit down and talk to people. Plus, there were a lot of people from industry, quite a few who seemed to jump on the mention that I do my research in Computational Biology. This is a huge deal. Why, you ask? When I was originally going on job searches, back in Undergrad, at the big career fair, this is usually what went down: I'd find a pharmaceutical company that I thought would be a big name for what I want to do, and walk up to them. The conversation will inevitably go like this:
Me: "My name is Suzanne, I do Computational Biology!"
Rep: "Sorry, we're looking for Computer Science majors only"
Me: [face fallen] "But, I have a bachelors in Computer Science!"
Rep: [lights up] "Oh! Do you know Java? We need programmers in our IT department.."
It was so aggravating. Instead of recruiting people to do research, they all were just recruiting code monkeys, even the companies that were known for research in my field. Sure, it's really important to program, but that's not necessarily the focus of research. It was just so.... frustrating. How nice it was to finally go somewhere, not even looking for an internship, and being asked to sign up, asked for contact info, resumes, etc.
I also met a lot of people at Tapia. If for nothing else, that was so much fun. I played pool with two PhD students from Berkley and TAMU, hung out a bit with someone from Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and just had a plain good time with everyone. I also was really lucky to have one of the sweetest roomies that I could have been matched up with (Lacey, from Auburn U). Plus, there were two other students from RPI (Onur and Jiao) who came to Tapia. Together, we represented RPI CS at a booth for one day during the conference. That was also fun, because it brought back memories of my recruiting days as an Undergraduate.
Oh! I almost forgot to mention! At the conference I remet a PhD student who just graduated from RPI CS, Joel Branch. He is now working for IBM full-time as a researcher. That's just really exciting, so I talked to him about how life was for him at IBM, and some of the pitfalls and trials that a person may face as they are transitioning from PhD to the workplace. I also asked about how "kid-friendly" IBMs policies are, and was very happy to hear the answer. It was very informative, and made me seriously think about going to IBM afterwards and pursuing research. Who knows? Maybe I'll apply for an internship their soon.
Tapia concluded for me Tuesday night. There was an awards banquet that went a little too long, causing some of us to design plans to escape. I went back to downtown Disney for a little bit, before deciding I needed to go to bed. All in all a good time.
Stuff about Bridge day and Grace Hopper in the upcoming posts. I'm just too tired to blog about it now. Also, I probably should get moving, since checkout is in a little bit.
Till then!
-Suzanne
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