NCUR 2012

I volunteered for a bit today for the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. It was a very fun and...interesting experience. Fun in regards to registering students from all over the place: Nepal, Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Truman (wherever that is), and so on. There will be 3,200 students presenting their research from all over the country. The interesting part was the professors: there were some very odd ducks. Several people had registered incorrectly by putting their last name in the first name field and vice versa. There were two professors that I worked with in particular that were livid that their name tags were #1 "Not in the correct place of their last name." #2 Incorrectly printed. BECAUSE THEY REGISTERED WRONG. I told one gentleman that he must have typed his name in the opposite fields and his response was "That is impossible, I registered myself. I don't make mistakes." We found his card in my section since his first name was Mark and I was on M-P, he was incredulous and said that he simply must get a new one printed because he didn't want to be referred to as Udzella for the entirety of the conference. I told him that with a first name like Mark, he would probably be ok, while in my head I was thinking how grateful I was that I never had a professor that ignorant. Can you imagine having to argue an incorrect test question with someone who never makes mistakes? All in all it was fun though, there were students there who I am fairly certain had never been on a plane before coming to this Conference. There was another guy from back East who wanted to know if we had any "free trails that allow you to walk on the mountain" when we said to just walk up behind the campus to one of the three trailheads he was shocked, even more so when we told him that the trails were free and that technically you could hike where you wanted, on the mountain.