The conference was also SO COOL for a few reasons. First, I got a big kick out of putting faces to names of people I've either been emailing with all year on my papers or whose papers I've been reading. Second, I'm a huge nerd and enjoyed hearing top-notch lectures about cutting-edge research on treatment algorithms for cervical cancer, new screening modalities in the pipeline, etc. Lastly, thanks to some outstanding mentorship from the US (Jennifer Smith) and here (Fang-Hui Zhao and You-Lin Qiao), I wasn't really intimidated, either during the conference or while giving the talk, though Sarah and I appeared significantly younger than the other people. I think that's because this year has allowed me to start rubbing elbows with these people...and has given me a foundation into the professional and social relationships I'll have in academic medicine, whether it's continuing researching cervical cancer prevention in low-resource settings or something else in global health. I guess that's what the Fogarty is all about?
Anyways, the day before our talks, Sarah and I went to this Modern Art Museum. I am not artsy or creative enough to really understand modern art, but we still had fun interacting with the exhibits.
My talk went well--I looked nice, which is more than half the battle, right?
It's pretty cool that my name was on the podium. And there were about 30-40 people there, just not in the front row, I promise.
Someone asked me a question afterwards, which I answered, but then he asked it again, and I got all flustered and sounded (and felt) like an idiot. But afterwards, a few people came up to talk about the presentation and the findings, and we were able to discuss the ramifications about the research in China in other settings, and that made me so excited!Immediately after my talk, I listened to Sarah practice hers one more time and ran into Dr. Zhang, who is in Yunnan Province and spearheading a HIV/HPV coinfection study that Sarah is helping out on. She's super nice, and I hope to see her in the future.
(Side note, which suit should I wear on residency interviews?). PS: JNCI just got back to us about the paper we submitted to them in February, and they like it! So we're doing a ton of edits now to resubmit
PPS: Today, I submitted Dr. Smith's paper too. And we're so close on 3 others...but who knows when they'll actually be ready
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