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Your Thesis = Free Vacation

Need more incentive to finish your higher degree?

I mean, beyond the sense of prestige in holding a title that 90% of the US population will never achieved? Beyond the fulfillment of duty in serving the scientific community through hours of knuckle-hard research? And beyond the personal accomplishment in reaching your own well-fought educational milestones?

How about a free trip to Chicago?

Listen up kids. You know that thesis you’ve put off writing today to play another 5 hour session of Fallout 3? Some people might actually want to read it. And even better, some other richer people might want to pay for you to present it.

I’ve just returned from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ (AIAA) 2009 Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference in Chicago, Illinois.

My flight, rental car, hotel room, event registration, and personal expenses: covered.

A year earlier, my spirits weren’t so high. I was spending 8 to 12 hours a day glued to the lab, frantically formatting and editing my university required master’s thesis into a vaguely comprehensible tomb of analysis, MATLAB graphs and source code. The underlying drive was clear. I needed to graduate. And soon.

The rewards, however, weren’t immediately clear. Just as a sprinter won’t put on his medal until after he’s won the race, a grad student won’t focus on the glory of the degree while work is still to be done.

But maybe I should have.

Upon the successful defense of my thesis, I happily shelved my bounded work between the dusty undergraduate textbooks I hadn’t touched in quarters. I started a job, and hadn’t planned to give my thesis another millisecond of my attention until the next job interview.

Shortly afterwards, my former adviser thankfully encouraged me to submit my paper to a conference in the hopes of both presenting my work to the community and potentially getting published. The palpable nectar of writing “published” on my resume drew my attention like a beagle to a tennis ball – and I agreed. My adviser submitted my thesis to the AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference, to be held at the Hyatt Regency at McCormick Place in Chicago. A few months later, my paper was accepted.

I suddenly found myself quite popular. My current employer found out about my presentation and was surprisingly willing to cover the costs of sending me to Chicago. My adviser informed me that my former university was also willing to cover the costs through its lab budget. (Although given the horribly unfortunate current state of the California State University budget, I opted to use my employer’s offer in hopes the school’s money could be put to better use.)

The conference itself was actually very interesting. After the initial public-speaking fear subsided, I was able to enjoy myself and take in the gooey, nerdtastic filing. There is some amazing work being done by our graduate students both here in the US and abroad, many of which I hope to write about in the following weeks. But in the downtime and evenings between sessions, you couldn’t help but feel like you were on a vacation. A free vacation. A free, paid vacation.

Had I understood that this reward was part of the trials in obtaining my higher degree, I may have worked that much harder. So to all the graduate students in the world, let me impart some recently obtained insight from someone a lap ahead in the race of life: there is a world of benefit beyond the prestige, the fulfillment, and the accomplishment of a master’s degree. There is free stuff.

To see a glimpse of the potential rewards, go here and here. This is a list of upcoming engineering conferences that your university or employer would like to see you attend. San Francisco? Italy? Greece?

Now get to work.