The best kind of networking is with cheese and wine

Hello 2016!
I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. Mine was the usual, but still great to spend so much time with family, eating, catching up with Netflix favourites and watching awful tele, but that’s what Christmas is about right?
Now that the New Year has arrived, and so have exams, for the first time ever (!) I’ve had a Christmas break which actually consisted of a break! Lucky me, I have no exams this January (sorry, but not sorry). Having a week or so off from studying, was surprisingly really hard to switch off. I’m always on the go, with a constant growing to-do list.
My 2016 has started off pretty good. I attended the MDSG (Mineral Deposits Study Group) Winter Conference held at the University College Dublin, where five friends and myself were lucky enough to present our MGeol research projects to fellow students, academics and industry professionals. The Monday to Wednesday was jam-packed with talks and coffee, occasionally some cheese and wine! Since we are only half way or so through our projects, it was a great to show fellow attendees the standard of research we do. This highlighted areas of our projects that we may not fully understand and need to focus our attention on further, as well as discussing further ideas. We received feedback on our presentation of our posters, as well as our content. For the conference dinner, I had the pleasure of sitting next to an exploration geologist from Rio Tinto, which admitted at first was slightly daunting. Although, it must have been daunting for him, since he sat on a table full of students from Leicester and Brighton, and we had a million and one questions to ask.
My MGeol Research Project Poster
My MGeol Research Project Poster
The conference was a great insight into just how important networking is. Not only that, but it was a great eye-opener to just how strong the research being undertaken at the University of Leicester actually is. I was expecting great things from Russel-Group institutions, however was slightly disappointed. You could say I’m biased, however, the quality and quantity of students representing the University of Leicester was outstanding. It really did make me proud being a student from here. Leicester even produced a winner, congrats Chloe!
Conference dinner
Conference dinner
The next stop for us 4th-year MGeol students is to present our posters to the rest of the department in the fourth coming weeks. Wish us luck!

Reblogged. Original post http://studentblogs.le.ac.uk/geology/2016/01/14/the-best-kind-of-networking-is-with-cheese-and-wine/

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