Two years ago, I created this blog after an inspiring weekend in Redmond, Washington at the very first annual conference hosted by the
Society for Promotion of Applied Research in Canine Science. I actually was encouraged to attend this conference by Dr. Yin, who offered to cover my conference registration.
It was a life-changing experience. Not so much in the sense that I suddenly decided to go into the field of canine research (that had already happened - ha!), but it was actually the first time I had to pretend to be a real adult all by myself. I was more than likely the only undergraduate student there and felt completely out of my comfort zone. My awkwardness around and preferred avoidance of strangers certainly didn't help. Luckily everyone I met was super supportive and encouraging and all of the researchers were happy to chat with me (after I managed to work up the courage to approach any of them).
I learned so much that weekend at SPARCS 2013. Actually, ever since then, I've compared how nervous I am feeling in any setting to how I felt that weekend. Nothing ever comes even close to comparing, and since I survived SPARCS, I can survive just about anything!
Every year, SPARCS shares the event as a
FREE livestream event, making the content accessible to anyone with an internet access. This year, tuning in to SPARCS has required a bit more dedication than usual... Because of the time difference, the very reasonable 9am - 6pm schedule in Phoenix, Arizona turns out to be 2am - 11am here in Bendigo. Yikes? It's currently the "lunch break" on Day 1 as I'm writing this blog post - meaning 6:00am here. I took a nap before the day started so I'm still going strong (with some tea/coffee and snacks) but we'll see how the rest of the weekend goes. Miss Audrey has been fast asleep all "morning"...
