Our final poster was the culmination of all the work our team had done throughout the semester, a representation of everything we had discovered and learned along the way! This aspect of the project involved the formatting of information regarding what our project was about, the methods taken to achieve our results, and what our collaborative data and findings were. We presented our poster to the other K493 groups before making final revisions to it for our presentation at the Biology Department's poster session. 

The creation of the poster was a really enjoyable process that I felt set the stage for the poster session going as smoothly as it did. It was really nice to be able to work together with everyone in the team on a collaborative project and take everyone's perspectives and feedback into consideration, along with being able to see what unique ideas everyone brought to the table and how this resulted in a finished product that we were all really proud of. 

I appreciated the fact that we had been able to present our own poster and listen to other presentations during our K493 meeting prior to the actual poster session. There was so much that I learned from hearing about what the research experience of the other groups had consisted of, and I felt like the meeting gave me the chance to reflect on what my research goals for the spring semester were from the questions we were asked following our presentation. 

The poster session itself was an amazing experience that I was so glad to have had the chance to participate in! It was really nice to be able to demonstrate my growth as a researcher by feeling confident in explaining the details of our project with a thorough understanding of why we took each step that we did and what the information we presented meant and why it was important both within and beyond the scope of the PARE project. Similar to my thoughts on the K493 presentation meeting, being able to learn about all the other fascinating research going on just within the bounds of our campus was really incredible, and it was inspiring to see how passionate so many of the students were about the research they dedicated so much of their semester to.

I felt that I took so much away from this portion of the project that I will be able to transfer to other aspects of my academic and career goals. I am currently working on submitting my first conference abstract, and this experience equipped me with so many skills that have already been directly applicable to that process and has helped make it feel less like venturing into uncharted waters. I hope that I am able to look back on this point in time another semester down the line and be able to say that I came even further than I have now. I can't wait for what the rest of the year has to hold!

Date of submission: 12/8/23

The contents of our poster can be accessed using the available link.