Amgen Conference at UCLA

My program has brought me to SoCal this weekend for the annual symposium at UCLA. The Amgen Program occurs at 10 campuses across the US, mostly in CA, but 4 in other states. For (most of the program's) mid-summer (my essentially end of summer), we all fly out and spend the weekend at UCLA mingling, networking, and listening to lots and lots of talks. It is now past midnight PST, and I'm tired from a long day of travel and activities, but I will write general updates.

Despite having to get up ridiculously early for the flight here, I was extremely pleased to discover that on Southwest, you still get free snacks!!! A nice little addition to my breakfast :).

I've always heard rumors that LA traffic is always awful, but I never truly believed it could actually be that bad. Well, it is. It took AGES to get from the airport to UCLA, because we were moving at slowpoke speed along the highway!!!!

We finally got to UCLA and got checked into our rooms. They are GORGEOUS. Picture a hotel room with two individual beds, desks, and half the size of a normal hotel room. That is what my room here looks like. It's been unclear whether or not these are also undergraduate dorms, or just for conferences (as the conference hall, basically everywhere I'll be for the next two days, is right down the walkway from my building). If undergraduate dorms, these rooms and buildings are incredible. The photo to the right is the entryway into our little complex, the Courtyard house of Sunset Village complex, and the one immediately below is of the bamboo in the middle of the courtyard.

While I may only think this because I've only eaten here once, the dining complex I ate at for lunch today had the most amazing food. Take their dessert section, for example, pictured here. !!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK AT ALL OF THE CHOICES. I only had one thing (sweet potato pie), which was delicious. I would have tried everything, but I was too stuffed from eating 8 plates of food. Yes, there was that much selection and that many good things that I had 8 plates of food. 

After lunch, we had a bit of free time before conference activities started, so a few of us wandered around campus and just did a basic loop around the track and athletic fields. UCLA is absolutely beautiful. There are lots of nice grassy patches, the sky is blue, the buildings are brick and gorgeous and castle-like, and it's just a general warm and sunny atmosphere. 

If I knew UCLA had such an amazing looking student center, I would have applied and come here in a heartbeat. What the heck am I doing in ugly Boston? Clearly I belong in California.

After wandering, we came back to our rooms and got ready for symposium activities! Our first was a networking icebreaker, where I saw after too long, two more gov loves who are doing the Amgen program at Caltech, Steph and Mahati. It was so great to see familiar faces, here, after so long! I lovelovelovelovelove my govies :). We hung out and chatted all the rest of the day. 

This is the general photo from the conference hall which
represents having speakers for the rest of the afternoon. 

In the evening, we had an Amgen Game Show which consisted of Jeopardy, Family Feud, and various other random shenanigans which may or may not have been science themed.  We got super spirited by school (most of which didn't actually show up), and we of course put in our best effort and had a ton of fun. It was great pooling the knowledge we had, being strategic, competing, and just being energetic about everything. In one of the non question answering activities we had to do, we stood in a line holding hands, and had to pass a hula hoop over ourselves without letting go until it got to the end. Clearly, I was extremely excited about this activity.

Yup, got my game face on.

Above is us standing in line, prepping for the activity. We rocked this because we realized we could loop around and help the hula hoop go down while still being able to keep hand holding. Our group rocks.  Unfortunately, a certain other school across the Bay won by a landslide, but we won't talk about them. After the game show and the fun, we hung out in one of the center's lounges for a little while before finally calling it a day. The fun resumes in the morning!!!!!

Back in Berkeley-land, I'm starting to finalize my results, my poster is mostly formatted and just needs results photos, conclusions, and acknowledgments added. Unfortunately the answer to my main hypothesis turned out negative, but such is science.