Day 3: Conference, All Day and Night

Today was wonderful in the sense that I was able to attend many sessions and meet new people, but also a bit sad because I never got to see the sun. I literally was inside the entire time the sun was out except for a brief glimpse as I ran from the hotel to the convention center to make it in time for free breakfast.

Me and Jennifer Jones
(best friends in 4th grade, reunited at the 3M Plenary lunch)

As much as I love AISES, they really need to work on food and accommodations of their attendees regarding food. I can understand a few meals being “on your own,” but when the majority of them aside from today were “on your own” while we are in one of the biggest tourist trap spots in the area, IT IS EXPENSIVE. I am glad that our group is made up of poor college kids used to unhealthy, irregular meals, otherwise the first two days would have been rough. HOWEVER, today we were fed quite extravagantly starting with a continental breakfast, lunch hosted by 3M, and finishing with the Traditional Honors Banquet. The few sessions I was able to attend were a Brainstorming session this morning, the 3M plenary lunch and information session, and the session for female engineers. I will focus on the last one, “Transcending the Glass Ceiling, Lessons Learned from Native, Female Engineers” because this is the session that truly got to me and revitalized my tired mind.

This session was hosted by two Native female engineers that work at Sandia National Labs. The main focus was on leadership and the different styles of it by splitting us into groups and letting us work through scenarios that dealt with difficult situations. My group was made up almost entirely of a group of women from Minnesota, and it was slightly awkward. You could tell they already had a group dynamic, and I am not too good at dealing with girls when it comes to close knit groups such as this one. When working through the situations, I had to get over that and work with the group in coming up with a solution. That wasn’t the part that interested me though, it was the responses that each group gave and the feedback we received from the two presenters. Their outlook on their position in the company was inspiring and I was thankful to be able to talk with them one-on-one after the presentation and get pictures with them. Along with this, I was able to capture the parting words that were meant to inspire us. It worked. (Video was too big, will upload separately)

After the session, I went straight to the closing circle that ended up being very similar to a talking circle with one person in the middle sharing their feelings on the conference and AISES in general. This part made me very uncomfortable. I did not go to the middle myself, but out of those that did a large majority of them started crying. I am uncomfortable with emotions and it made me feel very awkward watching these people cry in the middle of a giant circle.

Thankfully, that was not the last event. After a break of less than 30 minutes, we went right back to the conference for the Traditional Honors Banquet. This was neat mostly because we got really good food, but also because I was actually featured and called out for my scholarships I have received! It was cool, but the banquet room was so big that I don't think anyone but in our immediate vicinity saw me stand up so I felt weird and sat down quickly. (that's the thing about these big STEM conferences, everyone is at least partially socially awkward, no matter how well they try and hide it) Anyways, the really cool part of the banquet was that John Herrington was our Keynote Speaker! For those that don't know, he was the first Native American in space and after the banquet our whole group got to meet him! Technically, this was my second time meeting him, the first being when I was just a youngin less than 2 years old on Halloween. Thankfully we have pictures to prove it otherwise I would not have been able to remember it. My mom sent me the picture while we were waiting in line to meet him, and when we got to the front I showed him and he was almost as excited as I was! He seemed to remember my dad, so he gave me a hug and we got our own picture together just the two of us and OMG that was amazing!

After we were all done monopolizing John's time with the rest of the conference attendees, we headed over to what was supposed to be the "Traditional Activity" which turned out to be more like a rock group made up of Native American guys. Don't get me wrong, they were pretty good but when a group of Natives show up in regalia expecting a pow-wow, people just felt awkward. It was too loud and I was itchin for a round dance. They didn't switch either, so we left to go to Disney instead since it was our last night there.

Me, Kristina, Waylind, and then two of our other friends named Adam and Collin got a taxi and drove on over to what we thought was Downtown Disney which actually turned out to be Disney Boardwalk. I didn't know the difference, but the difference ended up being about 3 miles of highway, so we chased down one of the Disney shuttles and pretended like we were guests at the hotel. This pretty much set the tone of the rest of our night in Orlando, not knowing where we are (Kristina lol) and A LOT of walking.

Overall our travel back went well, except for a minor bump at the Orlando airport, and we made it back in 13 hours of travel start to finish. After not sleeping at all the night before, I fell asleep almost immediately after I made it back to my dorm and thus ends my journey across the country, in the middle of a snowstorm to the AISES 2014 National Conference.