#AGU2015

I’ve been going to the AGU conference forever (in dog years).  I went to a spring one in DC when I was in grad school, and I’ve been every year since 2004 in SF.  As a scientist, teacher attendee, teacher presenter, and now, as a mentor of budding young scientists!  I have to say that, other than the stress of overseeing the creation of scientific posters by high school students, this was by far the best incarnation of the meeting for me.  When I worked in science it was always fun and exciting, but I felt obligated to go to a certain strand of talk, and constrained in participation.  As a teacher it’s more isolated and inflexible.  Last year, as a teacher presenter, it was incredibly stressful (and I was 8 months pregnant with Charlie and could.not.stop.sweating.  It was truly awful.  It's a good thing that the education people filmed an interview with me right after the presentation (peak sweat) and both posted it online and sent it out in a mass e-mail.  Yay for embarrassing timing!).  This year, as a mentor, I just went and did what I wanted.  I helped the girls get their posters set up, took some obligatory pictures, and then followed my heart.  I went to a few talks on how cities are preparing for more extreme climate events in the future (bravo, Boulder, for installing bike paths that double as water tunnels during times of flood!), I ate a Nutella crepe, I people watched, I met R2D2, I had lunch with an old college friend, I went to the exhibit hall and had several engaging conversations with various sales reps.  I generally felt super relaxed and engaged.  I also drove a 12 passenger van up, which was thrilling.  Those things do NOT fit in all SF parking garages--biggest lesson of the day.

 I thought it would be a good picture for an APES GIS lesson.

 Young scientists ready to talk about accretion disks and dust sublimation!