Emile: Final Presentations, Forbidden City, and Inspiration!

Monday and Tuesday in Beijing were filled with final project presentations, the closing ceremony, and an eventful day within the city!

I had the great opportunity to give an oral presentation to all the delegations on Monday afternoon. This experience is one I don’t think I can ever forget; I was able to speak to a room that is one of the most diverse I think I will ever speak to. After giving my own presentation, I got to also listen to several others from countries around the world! Australia, Macau, Czech Republic! All of the students were able to present unique ideas that could further science in a number of significant ways.

Alongside the oral presentation, all of us were able to present our posters to the public during the morning. This was a great opportunity because never before have any of us tried presenting research to those who aren’t native English speakers. With slowed speeds and simplifies ideas, I was actually able to get the ideas of my project across. This, of course, came with the help of our guide who was kind enough to translate my entire research abstract and ideas into Mandarin (not an easy task)!!

Following the research events, all members of the competition attended the Closing Awards Ceremony. Here, we were able to see the distribution of awards, cultural presentations, and speeches from several of the competition officials. All of the United States representatives were awarded! It was a great feeling to see my teammates being awarded and to be able to celebrate a couple days of hard work with other delegation members.

Today, we got to see the Forbidden City! The Forbidden City is a historical site of Beijing. It is where, many years ago, the emperor and all of his affiliates lived. It was fairly exclusive, although it houses about 980 rooms! With quite a bit of walking and bumping into the thousands of people who were also visiting, we were able to see all of the key sites within the City. After walking through, we were able to walk through a park that overlooks the structures. It was a beautiful site.

Tomorrow, we will head to the Great Wall and, by the end of the day, we will have left all of the other foreign banquets. The experience with scientists and researchers from around the globe has been truly incredible. If I have to name one thing that the competition taught me, it would have to be how to be inspired.