I went to a Physical Chemistry Seminar about molecular dynamic simulations of bio molecular crystals. I went alone, hoping to gain more experience in how research and research presentations are executed. As I entered into the lecture I was surprised to see the myriad of students, professors, and faculty that was present at the seminar. Most of the people there were graduate students in the physics and chemistry field. I ran upon a couple other STEM EE scholars students at the seminar but other than that, I don’t believe I saw many other undergraduate students. It made me feel a little out of place since I was very uneducated about the mechanisms of the systems that were presented and since I was younger than many other people. I was almost intimidated by the older audience since they all seemed to understand the entire lecture. I was not able to talk with the speaker but I did talk to some graduate students that were sitting around to ask questions that I had since many of them were well educated and interested in the topic present. I understood the basics of the lecture since it went over some of the things that I have learned previously in my chemistry and physics classes. Also some of the information went along with what I was learning and the future topics of my chemistry class here at OSU. It was interesting to see how this one person’s job is so concentrated on just one small section of science and how much time they dedicate to learn that much on that topic. It really made me see how diverse science and math as a whole is and how one person can really do anything within it since there was so much information in just a small topic about physical chemistry. Second semester, I will be joining and helping out with research in the field of neuroscience and radiology, which doesn’t have much chemistry in the study so it didn’t help me see much into the research I will be doing but it did help me realize how much time, effort, people, and resources go into research. I did not expect to see that it was so well done without any “mistakes” and how research really does travel the world. The researcher who was speaking came from Michigan State University, which in reality is not too far from where we are but it is very interesting to see how impactful research is since the world really does move another step from where it is when something new is discovered. There is a lot of merit in being active in this academic community as an undergraduate student since one can get more exposure into the “real world” and they will understand if they really are interested in a topic or not. Along with this, being more educated in a subject is mostly always beneficial to understanding more about anything academia related. I think this helps with networking as one student can communicate with more speakers, professors, faculty, and graduate students. I personally would not believe it would be a waste of time since so much can be achieved if the time and resources in the lectures is used wisely.
