I was able to go to two national conferences this year in Lexington, Kentucky and Houston, Texas.

 First was Tau Beta Pi, and it was certainly a learning experience. There was a small job fair, a few training sessions, and then the biggest part was "the business meetings." I was placed on the finance committee to renew reimbursement forms which was certainly interesting. All committees had to present their work in front of the entire floor and by a process of Robert's Rules of Order, the new ideas or amendments  were passed based on voting. 

The second was for SWE or Society of Women Engineers which we drove to Texas for. It was right before elections and there happened to be a gun show right next to our convention center so that was quite the encounter (see picture below). SWE definitely knows how to throw a conference though. They had tons of informational sessions to go to and the biggest job fair I've been to yet. I was glad to learn that there's quite a few large companies in the Connecticut/Massachusetts area for biomedical engineering! And I didn't expect it (I should have), but while taking a break Aubrey and I saw one of our fellow EWH participants walk outside so we had fun catching up with Christine!! Our Tulane crew also learned that Houston drivers are the craziest... 

... I apparently haven't felt like writing my blog posts this semester, so I'm going to share this semester's happenings in pictures with a few short paragraphs! To sum it all up, I've been busy, busy, busy (as usual, but even more extreme!). This semester proved to break all records for leaving campus on the weekend, but I'll share things I did on campus so far :D

So first, there's class of course. My schedule this semester consists of Elements of Design, Research and Professional Practice, Team Design, Bones Bodies and Disease, and Urban Geography: New Orleans Case Study. I decided I was only going to take electives that have excellent reviews and it has certainly made the semester more enjoyable! The Bones class is taught my Dr. Verano who is basically a world renowned anthropologist with his skeleton studies. Now, if I ever so desire, I can do some diagnosing on skeletons - dental disease, trauma, osteoarthritis, dwarfism.. you name it! Urban Geography is taught by Dr. Campanella, who is also a very well known geographer that I think probably knows more about New Orleans than 99.9% of the population. I've learned so much about the city's history and have gone on two field trips touring New Orleans itself and up the river. It's not very often that we think about how our street patterns came to be and how there's such a drastic racial distribution in cities. The class  has made me realize how important history is when looking at our day to day life, i just wish in school we concentrated more on history that REALLY impacts our daily lives. Of course the history we learn is important, but I never even thought about why or how cities became the hub of more crime and primarily black populations.  My elements class is on the nuts and bolts of mechanical engineering - literally! And with team design I actually got to choose my project since I found one I really liked from Engineering World Health. I'm working in a group of 5 with Aubrey, Jordan, Joe, and Claire on a mission to solve one of the "pressing issues" EWH has identified. We're creating a prototype for a oxygen concentrator sensor since many concentrators in developing countries don't have indicators if they're working anymore or not. Without knowing if the concentrator is outputting 95% oxygen, patients receiving oxygen therapy don't benefit from the extra air and this can cause detrimental effects. Since this was a big problem I saw in Mt. Meru hospital, I really wanted to work on it! So far, we've identified two potential solutions to the problem and will be prototyping and testing all next semester once we order everything.

With some hard work, we finally have our Tau Beta Pi chapter running a bit more smoothly with actual events! We held a little social for eligible members at our advisor, Dr. Walker's house, volunteered at Rock n' Bowl for STEM education, hosted a Engineering futures session, and just had initiation of 11 new members! TBP is really a great honor society to be involved with (and qualified for!), something I'll actually value after graduation. 

So glad Donna Mama could come visit me for her birthday! Besides having to deal with classes while she was visiting, we managed to pack in a lot of fun! She finally got to meet my favorite drag queen, Blanche, at my favorite campus event of course... Bingo!  We also fed the ducks in Audubon, went out to eat twice for her birthday, and ended the week with volunteering at Boo at the Zoo with Women in Science. Linda also came to have some fun with us and we were glad to have her visiting and hanging out with my mom while I had lab work.