Create 2024-04-23-Tuesday-April-23rd.md

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+## USTARS and IOWA CITY
+
+## It is super early
+- I'm actually writing this after working on a paper submission, just before heading to sleep. It's been a week!
+- I just got back from presenting a paper at USTARS, which is the Underrepresented Students in Topology and Algebra Research
+Symposium. It's my first time, it was in Iowa City, and I have to say it was AMAZING! You really felt pretty close with
+everyone by the end of the Symposium. Also, my labmate Jeremy gave a Distinguished talk, which was awesome! We were both
+plotting about whether or not we would make it this year, and I was convinced!
+- On the last day, I ended up carpooling back with a shuttle of Californians (naturally). We plotted to have the next USTARS
+in Oregon (nope; the next one is in Colgate U or Georgia).
+- Anyways, so about Iowa City; the people are super friendly, the food I had was amazing, and I just had a great time.
+There is so much to do, too! After the first day of the Symposium, people went to a bar, some others went to a house party,
+and this was after a full day of talks and posters and a dinner afterwards, too! My friend and I (since she goes there)
+ended up hanging out at her apartment and watching the movie Elemental, which I hadn't seen before. I just had a great time.
+- There were so many people who were just amazing (including my roommate, who is a total bad@$$ and not only got the NSF award,
+is mentored by two amazing profs but also happens to have Caribbean parents!) and it was just the most wonderful, thoughtful
+space. I will upload all the photos I took for the organizers; I promise!
+- Oh, we also took a group photo, as is customary!
+- Interestingly, my friend at CMU had told me that they went to undergrad in Iowa, and it was a good time. So they had hoped
+I would like it, and I definitely did! I loved it! I kid you not; by the first afternoon I had found boba and fish balls and
+was having a pretty tough time deciding what to eat considering I really only had to eat one meal. And everyone was just
+super friendly and I made friends with a corgi!
+I even went to a prospective students Open House day that happened to be going on
+when I arrived, and I pretended to be everything from a Theatre Arts student, to a Physics student, until I hung out at the
+Maths table.
+- The theme this year seemed to have some quantum-ness to it, so some talks on Hopf algebras, quantum algebras, Bosonization
+but also some talks on more classical Graph Theory topics involving colorings and that sort of thing. And of course, on
+the Algebra side, one of the Faculty distinguished talks was on the ABC Conjecture and my friend (yes, the one who I hung out
+with to watch Elemental) gave a talk on Holomorphic Differentials to a pretty full room!
+- I was surprised that there was a lot of interest in my poster, which I was sort of arguing about with Jeremy a while ago,
+because I wasn't sure that I was a fit for the Symposium. I have to take the L on that one; he was right that it would get
+a lot of interest. So that was really gratifying. In general, I think everything was super interesting, and every session
+was well-attended. 
+
+## Some photos
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars2.png" width="300">
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars3.png" width="300">
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars4.png" width="300">
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars5.png" width="300">
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars6.png" width="300">
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars7.png" width="300">
+
+- a mural.
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars8.png" width="300">
+
+- There were bunnies all over campus at night!
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars9.png" width="300">
+
+- Melody's Quantum Subalgebras talk
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars10.png" width="300">
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars12.png" width="300">
+
+- Alex's ABC Conjecture talk. Yay. An elliptic curves talk!
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars13.png" width="300">
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars14.png" width="300">
+
+- The Maths building is what used to be the Physics building. The outside says Henry, Ohm, Fresnel.
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars15.png" width="300">
+
+- So good! Potato and veggies and salad with strawberries and I don't even know it all tasted delicious!
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars16.png" width="300">
+
+- some kind of s'more desert
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars19.png" width="300">
+
+- Jeremy's talk on positroids
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars20.png" width="300">
+
+- Kevin's talk on Hopf Algebras
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars21.png" width="300">
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars22.png" width="300">
+
+- Some people made origami with their posters at the end of the Symposium!
+
+<img src="/images1/ustars24small/ustars23.png" width="300">
+
+- Or even paper planes!
+
+## Okay
+- I think I'm definitely heading to sleep at this point!
+- It's going to be an interesting set of weeks as I'll be travelling again, while working. I actually prefer that,
+as I find that I'm much more productive outside of campus. I'm particularly excited for summer, interning, going to
+Maths grad summer school (yay) and for the upcoming forum I'll be attending in Fall, as well as my first
+visit to an institute I've been communicating with weekly in Spring! It's been a wonderful
+year for me, and it's all been super exciting, but I need to sleep I think!
+
+## And that's it