Here is a letter I received from Alisa (previous shelver)! Exciting news from her…..
Hey Cheryl 🙂
A lot has happened since I last stopped in to the library, so I thought I would fill you in on some of the big things going on in my life! I joined another lab, a comparative psychology lab in which I work with pigeons. We are training them to perform visual tasks, and applying that to the human visual system. In September, I presented a poster at the Iowa Physiological Society meeting and placed third in the poster competition. It’s exciting because psychology posters hardly ever do well and physiological meetings, and the $100 prize is a bonus! In October I presented at the Mid-American Association of Behavior Analysis meeting in Milwaukee. There wasn’t any competition there, but I did present for the chair of the neuroscience department at U of W Milwaukee! And last Saturday, I went to San Diego to present at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. Over 30,000 neuroscientists attended from around the world!!! To put that in perspective, there were about 30 people at the Iowa Physiological Society meeting I presented at, and about 85 at the one in Milwaukee. I was nervous to say the least, but it went really well. I met a grad student from the U of W at Milwaukee there, so I’m thinking that I’ve got good chances of getting into their doctorate program. Which reminds me, I’m applying to doctorate programs!! I’m not getting my hopes up too high–I was mostly looking at master’s programs but I recently found out that schools prefer you enter a doctorate program right away. This means that I’m switching gears on pretty short notice, which makes me nervous. But plan b is to find a research assistantship for next year and then reapplying. I am really excited to be at this point in my life. It’s a little bit scary, but I look forward to what the future has in store for me. I hope everything is going well at the library, and I hope I have time to stop in soon!
Sincerely,
Alisa