A Parliament of Owls

The past couple of months have been crazy-town in the Wasden household (well, this Wasden household, anyway).  Probably the next couple of posts you see will be recap of that.  First up, I had a couple of research conferences I presented at (sort of...I stood next to artfully designed posters that I thankfully never had to pay to print).

At the end of March, I braved a 5am-van-ride with other (smarter) BYU kids and drove up to Weber State in Ogden to present at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research.  My presentation slot was right at the start of the conference, so after my two-hours of standing around, I met up with my good friend Mike who lives in the area and we spent a few hours talking before it was time for me to head back down to Provo.

My Poster at NCUR

Looking towards the rest of the presenters at my session

Creepy picture of myself to prove I was actually there

At the beginning of April, I presented two posters on two different research projects at the Fulton Research Conference here at BYU.  One was on the Greek goddess Nike, and how she is actually a symbol of Ancient Greek identity, and not a lesser goddess to be ignored (this was actually my senior thesis...I wrote a 34-page beast on the topic).  The other was on the research I did on the falcon mummy (which turned out to be a fake...) and how it can be applied to modern museum practices.

Over achiever?

Presenting at these things made me feel like a super awesome professional something-or-other.  I've been working on the research for these projects for years (4ish for the Nike one and something like 2 for the mummy one).  It was fun to explain them to people that were legitimately interested in them (people that came up and asked "So...did you actually do any work?" I wanted to punch in the face).

And a bonus, my mummy research won first place at the Fulton Con in the Anthropology division!  I got a shiny blue ribbon and a $300 check that they promise will come to me in the mail before the end of May... I hope so, cos we need to pay the rent.

First time for first place!

I love doing research.  I'm a sucker for it.  I do it for fun.  Heck, I even have a research project planned for this summer, even though I graduated.  Maybe I'm crazy?