Today marked the first official day of the conference. This morning we met our group and lead professor. All students were able to converse about future aspirations and ask any research related questions, as well. To be expected, everyone seemed very nervous at breakfast. No one was talking, and it was somewhat awkward. However, the day got better, as people and professors got to know each other.
My group contains all women, most of them seniors at their colleges or universities. They came from all over the United States to be at this conference, which I thought was really neat. The first thing that stuck out about my group was our overall ambition. Many of these women have jobs lined up after graduation, which I assume isn’t easy, no matter the field one is entering into.
For example, my roommate at the conference was offered a position to work for a public relations firm in New York, pending her completion of her internship with Fox News. Others in the group plan to attend graduate school and pursue a higher education of some sort.
Seeing all of these seniors with their lives together was very uplifting; thus, I would encourage more students of all disciplines at Augustana to venture out to an academic conference of their choice to gain more insight on the job market from peers besides those at Augustana.
Surely, I am not saying Augustana doesn’t breed good ideas for future success because it does. However, I am saying that there are more ideas and people to explore; so, even though meeting new people may be awkward, it’s well worth being uncomfortable for a minimal amount of time.
As the morning subsided, my group realized that we were missing something, the outdoors.
For the rest of the afternoon, we presented our papers outside. I really enjoyed listening to people present, but it’s hard to gage my opinions on my group’s topics because I have not heard all of them yet.
I will have a better understanding tomorrow, after all presentations are complete.
My own presentation went well, I thought. As assumed, the presentation was informal, but I was still a good amount of nervous. I was very receptive to the critiques that my peers gave me. One of the revelations that they thought about was the regulation of media advertising pertaining to men. If I was to ever write another research paper similar to this topic, I would look at men instead of women.
Dinner is up next. I am obviously very hungry, but I am also excited for dinner because my lead professor, Dr.Vogan will be presenting his own research. He’s a quiet yet thoughtful individual that specializes in sports media and just finished a book on ESPN. We will see what he has produced for this evening’s talk.
This is a written account by Augustana junior multimedia journalism and communication studies major Katie Canning as she takes us on her journey of navigating an undergraduate honors conference at DePauw University.