World Tour Part 2 - Portland

The second stop on my world tour for science was the Evolution conference in Portland, Oregon. This conference was so much bigger than the Animal Behaviour one, and it was slightly overwhelming as a solo traveller, and one of the few Australians there to boot. Nevertheless I braved the masses and met some awesome new people from all over; Vienna, Vancouver, Ithaca... the list went on.

The conference itself was one of my favourites. Considering I'd arrived thinking this would be where I least fit in, expecting an overload of genetics and nitty gritty talks, I ended up often finding myself torn between multiple talks that were on at the same time. There was student-faculty networking organised, so that students had the opportunity to meet with academics in small groups to ask all our burning questions about life after the PhD. A huge shout out to Dr Liam Revell for giving up his lunch hour to talk to my group about all things academic life.

Quote of the conference:

|"Someone will die and the larger the group, the less likely it will be you"

Then there were the multiple massive poster nights, where there was yet another opportunity to meet new people and check out some seriously cool science. On top of that there were awesome social events organised by the various societies, including a film festival featuring entries from people of all levels of science; high school, undergraduate, postgraduate, and beyond. They had everyone in stitches the whole night. Check out the entries at the website.

Connections were made, ideas were swapped, friends were made, and it all came to an end at the super social at Oregon Zoo. There was buffet banquet, mini donuts, Ben & Jerry's, and of course lots of bad dancing and singing along very loudly to YMCA :) And finally it was time to head home for a week before jetting off to the next conference.