I had an awesome time at the PAT conference. I was able to meet other students and be around a room of people who enjoy researching history like I do. It was also really great to be around people of the history major and spend one on one time with Rollins students and faculty that I haven’t gotten to foster relationships with before. I was also able to meet and talk to a Holt school student and I was able to form a bond with another student and grow my network at Rollins.

During my presentation, I was nervous at first but about halfway through I found my rhythm and was confident with my presentation. It was a small audience, but it still helped me grow a lot because it was mostly people I did not know. After my presentation, there was a really great conversation with everyone in the room about my topic and I was able to discuss my research and develop some more questions that I could research further. My fellow presenter even asked me a question which was really cool! I was also able to listen to presentations from other students and ask them questions. That was another cool thing about this conference, it’s with a bunch of different students from different schools. It was a great environment to be around!

After my presentation, Dr. Strom and I spoke about my essay and research, and discussed how I may be able to work more on this research and paper and publish it, which would be a really awesome opportunity!

I have spent a lot of time preparing for this conference by re-writing my paper and making it into a professional nine page paper that will be easy to understand and easy for me to convey to others. I really enjoyed writing this paper last semester during my Researching American History class (which is featured as a ‘cool class’ at Rollins!) and I have learned a lot not only about my subject, the Ohio Wesleyan Football game in 1947, but also about researching, working in the archives, and writing.

I know that I have grown a lot as a writer, and it’s very exciting to be able to share my growth with others. The Phi Alpha Theta conference is a conference by the history honor society where history students come to present their research and can even compete with one another over presentation. In order to compete, you have to be a part of Phi Alpha Theta. That’s another thing I am excited for – I will be able to be a member of Phi Alpha Theta next year (again, the history honor society on campus), and next year at the conference, I will be able to present my research and be in the running to compete with others.

I’m excited for this experience because it helps me with my life goals—being a researcher and writer. The most rewarding things in my life are the things that feed my passions and further my goals. I am also really glad that Dr. Ewing and Dr. Strom encouraged me and all the other history students to do our best in the classroom, and then to go further and encourage us to do things like this. This conference is an awesome opportunity for me to grow. It doesn’t just look good for Rollins or good for me, but it helps me grow in my presenting skills, my writing skills, and my critical thinking skills.

The Phi Alpha Theta regional conference in Jacksonville at the University of North Florida was a good opportunity for me to spend time with some of my classmates who are also interested in history.  I really enjoyed attending their presentations and learning more about the subjects they researched.

The other Rollins students who attended the conference with me were very professional and knowledgeable, and I was grateful to be able to travel with them and especially grateful for their support, since I was quite nervous for my own presentation.  After this positive experience, I hope to be able to get involved in another such regional history honors society conference next year. I also hope to be able to encourage other students interested in historical research to participate in future Phi Alpha Theta regional conferences and inform them about this opportunity for learning outside of lectures, applying learning from the classroom, and cooperating with others from the same field, including, of course, their own classmates.

At first, I was personally very intimidated by the idea of speaking at a conference, but ultimately it was a fun and successful day, so I hope I can help other history-interested students like me similarly practice their public speaking and communication of research skills.

Going to the Phi Alpha Theta regional conference at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville was an opportunity for me to attend such a conference for the first time.  I was only just recently inducted into Phi Alpha Theta, so I was curious about what this event would be like.

I chose to participate in this conference because one of my personal goals is to improve my public speaking skills, and this conference presentation contributed to that since I have now gained more experience doing such presentations.  Doing history research and then communicating it are a large part of the history major, which is why this conference was a great opportunity to exercise these skills in a professional setting and see some examples of other such research presentation.

I am very proud of this paper because it took an overwhelming amount of research and translation and polishing to put together, even before all of the editing and restructuring I did after the final draft was complete in order to make it suitable for presentation at this particular conference, so I was excited to be able to share it with others also in the history field.  I think my presentation went remarkably well, and I am glad I was able to represent Rollins and our chapter of Phi Alpha Theta with the best work I have.

Conference Day 2: Poster Session

The poster session was a wonderful experience as I was both able to share my findings with others and explain the processes we had developed in research but also receive feedback and opinions from researchers within the same domain of chemistry. Unlike university poster sessions the audience I had already have the background science information and I was able to more deeply delve into our methods of experimentation and calculation. This is what brought forth many of the intellectual conversations I had where others suggested utilizing addition instrumentation of density precision measurements, as well as possible sample and solution preparation techniques.

I was able to connect to one of the researchers from one of the few laboratories that evaluate chemoreception through volumetric parameters, and it was interesting to hear his perspective on the techniques we utilized in comparison to theirs. In addition to the conversations I had specific about my research, other physical chemists whose research focused on other interests would stop by giving me tips on publishing a more papers from my work as well as what laboratories later on at the graduate level would apply to what I had experience in. The graduate students themselves would express to me their frustrations and joys when your time becomes fully dedicated to your research. Many seeing that I was still an undergraduate that was beginning to apply to graduate schools would offer me advice and some even invited me to contact them if I ever need help with my application or during my campus visits.

Overall the sense of community and belongingness really made me confident in my decision to pursue my research and my education to a higher degree, it showed me what the world beyond held for chemists in this developing age and it was very assuring and welcoming.

Conference Day 1: Conference Opening

The American Chemistry Society Annual Meeting in Orlando was my first time attending a national academic conference. It was more inspiring than overwhelming to experience everyone coming from universities and laboratories around the United States as well as international members. I was able to become acquainted with many of them through the various activities in place for academic and networking purposes.

As an undergraduate student I prioritized attending the workshops geared to preparing students for graduate school; resume writing skills, interview tips, and graduate research experience. Attending the Graduate School fair allowed me to browse the graduate schools that focused on the graduate programs of my interest, as well as meet some of the faculty from those departments and understand what they were looking for in incoming students. Conversations like these amplified my interest to apply to graduate school and further my academic track through research. I was later on able to attend the research presentations of many of these professors and really understand the work that went into graduate level research.

The wide range of topics in the many presentations allowed me to understand the innumerable pathways one topic could take through research. In addition to that, the information I learned from many novel research findings was inspiring as it made me realized that we can never truly know enough about anything and that the world around us is just waiting to explored.

This entire experience served not only as an inspiration for me to pursue my academic goals, but it also made me fall in love with what I do in the Rollins laboratory with our professors. It showed me the bigger picture of all the hard work and dedication I put in my studies and my research, because seeing others whether they were also undergraduate or post graduate chemists really made me feel part of a large academic community that really believe in the work they put forth.

Caravan for Democracy & AIPAC Policy Conference: Blog #2

Before traveling to Israel with Caravan for Democracy, I was earnestly skeptical in my support of the Israeli state. As a MENA minor, I have spent years studying the numerous human rights violations that Israel has committed against the Palestinian people. When I spent seven months studying abroad in Jordan, I lived with a Palestinian homestay family. The grandmother of my homestay family told me stories of when she was forced to leave her home in Palestine in 1950; she walked all the way to Jordan with her family. What is more, I spent my junior and senior year researching Christian Zionism in the U.S. and its subsequent impact on the livelihood of Palestinians hoping for a two-state solution.

Based on these experiences, I was adamantly against the political and military foundations of the Jewish state. This mindset started to change when I took the classes “Jewish Life & Thought” and “Jerusalem: Religion, History, and Politics” with Dr. Yudit Greenberg. Dr. Greenberg, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, taught me about concepts such as Jewish diaspora, global anti-Semitism, and the Jewish people’s historical claim to the land of Israel.

These classes, in addition to my time spent in Israel, showed me that the Jewish people have a powerful tie to their homeland that cannot be ignored. Nonetheless, that does not excuse the various atrocities that they have committed against the native Palestinian population.

Being a participant in the AIPAC Policy Conference helped me to mitigate my understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the conference, I sat in on break out sessions regarding topics such as the BDS movement, the state of life in the Gaza Strip, and the military strength of Israel’s neighbors. I got to listen to distinguished speakers from both sides of the political aisle, demonstrating that their allegiance to Israel is truly bipartisan.

Caravan for Democracy & AIPAC Policy Conference: Blog #1

Last month, I had the privilege of traveling to Washington, D.C. for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference. The annual policy conference is the largest gathering of America’s pro-Israel community.

I was invited to the conference on behalf of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), whose goal is to facilitate constrictive dialogue about Israel and the Middle East on college campuses across America. This past January, I was selected to be a part of JNF’s Caravan Democracy Student Leadership Mission to Israel, a ten-day fully subsidized trip that provides non-Jewish American students with an opportunity to explore the Jewish and democratic state of Israel through meetings with political, cultural, and community leaders from diverse backgrounds and faiths.

During my time in Israel, I was able to collaborate with student leaders from around the United States. I also got to learn about Israel’s vibrant culture, Israeli-Palestinian relations on the ground, and several groundbreaking Israeli innovations in military technology, clean energy, and start-up technology. I was also surprised to learn that Israel has such a lively LGBTQ+ population, and even hosts one of the largest Pride festivals every year in the city of Tel Aviv. As an International Relations and Religious Studies major, with a concentration in Middle East and North African Studies, I was excited to travel to Jerusalem and be in a place so sacred to the three Abrahamic faiths. Getting to participate in the Caravan for Democracy Fellowship was a truly transformative experience, and it gave me a new perspective going into the AIPAC Policy Conference.

Phi Alpha Theta Conference Audience Experience

The Phi Alpha Theta Conference is a conference in which history students and professionals are able to meet and share their research with one another, in doing so, challenging arguments and providing critical feedback and support to enable continued development within the field.

This year the regional conference was held at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. It lasted from around 8:00 AM in the morning until about 4:00 PM in the evening and included a number of different panels where papers were presented, key note speaker addresses and time to interact with other students. One of the things I enjoyed most about the conference was the ability it gave me to listen to other people’s research in topics I haven’t necessarily learnt about before. One topic that I found particularly interesting was that about the Salem witch trials as this is not something I knew about much before hand. Not only did this spark my interest in new periods of history and in new geographic locations, it also gave me insight into how other people conduct and write their research papers. For example, I didn’t think to include methodology in my own paper, however, after having heard a number of people do this in theirs, I think in future that it would be a good idea and would help to provide some background to the topic at hand.

I also enjoyed listening to the keynote address because it showed me a new dimension of history. Whilst I have always understood that history is extremely interdisciplinary, I had never thought about applying in the context that the speaker did: looking at addiction historically and how it has progressed in terms of psychology. This was something I found interesting and is another avenue that I would like to explore further during my time here at Rollins.

Presenting an Academic Paper

Whilst I have prior experience in public speaking, the thought of having to present original academic research in front of other students and talented historians daunted me. As with anything, the ability to present first depended on adequate preparation, something that was difficult to balance while maintaining classes, volunteering and work. This was something that was difficult but that I believe overall was a success.

One thing I definitely got out of this experience was better time management skills because I had to set myself self-motivated deadlines and adhere to these. We also had a practice within the department which was helpful in determining what to change, how to develop our presentation style and to shake some of the nerves in a more informal setting than that on the day. During this time, I realized how much I needed to improve within the space of a week; I read off of my paper without making audience eye contact, I didn’t print it with font large enough to read so I had to squint and I didn’t order my pages. From the feedback given, I was able to turn this around and by the time it came to the conference, I felt confident and ready to present.

I was in the first session of presenters and with that, nerves where minimal as I didn’t have too much time to let it sink in. The judge of our panel introduced us all and our paper topics before we began and I was surprised to learn that the majority of other presenters were seniors, juniors and sophomores, I was one of the very few freshmen. Whilst this was a nerve-wrecking fact, I felt like I did very well in my presentation by speaking clearly and with a good tempo. I also enjoyed the ability to answer further panel questions upon completion that were posed to us by fellow audience members.