Meeting at UCLA

Hi there!

A long time without writing in here. Some time ago, I read that the best way to become a great writer is obviously, writing a lot. Indeed, the author of that very common statement said that he recommend to  his students to open a blog and write in it as often as possible. So here I am, writing my first post in english to be, at least, understandable in what I write.

Today I want to write about my visit to Los Angeles, LA as it is known here in USA. Well, I can not say that I really visited LA,  I visited UCLA. I study a tiny worm which is a model organism to study molecular processes that occur in living organisms, including humans. This organism has conserved molecular processes that happen in higher organisms like humans. Thus, whatever happen in a cell of this tiny worm, can happen in a similar way in human cells.

But to the point, I went to LA because there were an international meeting of researchers who study this tiny worm. This was my first meeting and I have to say that it was overwhelming. There were a lot of conferences and poster presentations. I was learning something, when suddenly, the next thing to be learn was already starting. Next time I will try to be more organized and to be prepared for the different topics the speakers will talk about.

It is open eyes. Usually in the lab where you make different experiments to study this tiny worm, is easy to forget the other many and very different approaches to study the worm. For instance, I study how cells in the worm germ-line decide between being oocytes or sperm, and it's easy to forget that other people could study the differentiation of the neurons or gut cells or the lifespan of the whole animal.

The meeting also disappointed me a little bit. There was this last plenary session in which there was a talk made by a big cow, if you know what I mean. This great investigator tried to give an inspirational talk by encouraging people to make research for the future. However, it wasn't inspirational at all because everything that he said was hackneyed, anything new. For example, every research knows that technology is always advancing and that have to move on or this researcher will stuck in the old and inefficient ways of research.

Anyways, this was my general impression of the meeting. I would say very very general because I have to write about the organization, meals, people I met, the poster session and about the last alcoholic night. All of what I really enjoyed but right now I am lazy to write. Be considerate to me, this is the first time that I write just because.