My First Professional Meeting Experience

Brandon Chen is a senior majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Fall 201 Conference Grant which he used to attend the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting.

.

It was a typical summer afternoon when I decided to go to a nearby coffee shop to fuel up before starting my long experiment. Suddenly, I got a notification from one of the graduate students in our lab: Three people are giving talks at ASH (American Society of Hematology) this year! My first reaction to this message was it must be the two postdocs and one graduate student who are presenting. Surprisingly, it turned out that I was one of those presenting my research project. From that moment on, I started preparing for my upcoming talk.

            After coming back from my summer research experience, I had no time to slack but swiftly dive into my project and see how much I could accomplish before the talk. Since I am also enrolled in a graduate division class and also TA-ing, it became very important to manage my time well and work efficiently. I used to set block of time to dedicate solely to studying or conducting experiments, but I found out it was not the most efficient way. Instead, I learned how to utilize my time wisely by fitting in smaller chunks of work between breaks. With this new time managing skills, I was able to successfully reproduce more data and also work on the PowerPoint presentation for the talk.

 

            It was not until a month before the talk that I started feeling the pressure. Looking at the schedule of the oral presenters, I noticed basically everyone has a PhD or an MD behind their name. Being as one of very few undergraduate students presenting at this meeting suddenly gave me a huge amount of pressure. I started doubting myself if I really do qualify for giving a talk compared to all these experts when I am still working on my undergraduate degree. However, after multiple rounds of practice talks and discussing with my lab PI, Dr. Larry Boise, I gained more confidence in myself. I realized that I was the person who led this project to where it is today and I should be proud of my accomplishments, and no one will know this project better than me! After all these months of preparations and practice, I am ready to go to San Diego!

            After arriving in San Diego, where the ASH annual meeting was held in 2018, I could not wait to see what kinds of amazing research are going on. This conference encompasses all fields of hematological research ranging from hemophilia (disease of blood clotting) to malignancies such as leukemia. I was shook when I found out there were more than 25,000 participants coming from all over the world, and I cannot wait to network and learn about other researchers’ work. Throughout the conference, I went to multiple oral and poster sessions to expand my horizons, and I learned a lot about the most recent techniques and finding that are not yet published. 

            After months of preparation, the day of my oral presentation finally arrived. Compared to the panicked me a month ago, I am not as stressed as I used to be. Of course, saying that I was not afraid will be lying to everyone, but at this point I was prepared enough to show my research to everyone. Standing on a stage in a room that holds 2000 people and giving a talk is not something I can experience every day. As I successfully delivered my talk, I was approached by 5 professional researchers to ask about my research, and I was able to eloquently answer their question. Many people would say the hardest part of any form of presentation is not the delivery part of the talk, but it is the question portion that differentiate whether you know your research. Overall, this opportunity of giving a talk at an international meeting gave me an invaluable experience as a researcher-in-training, and I will definitely be interested in participating in another one of those conferences.

Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Conference Grants.