I've noticed that some people from Minnesota blogged about their NCUR experience. I guess I'll throw my own hat in the ring.
From April 20th through April 24th, I found myself in beautiful Lexington, Virginia. I'm actually not exaggerating when I call it beautiful. The town of 7,000 people rests in the Blue Ridge Valley so I was surrounded by beautiful high greeen hills and trees and streams all week. It made me realize how much I missed Washington state. I thought I had gotten over it.
The conference itself left a little to be desired. As I told another student with whom I shared a presentation room, I envisioned the conference as a way to meet the next generation of experts in all fields of study.
What I got instead was a bunch of disorganized presentations, some of which I'm positive were just the end result of a class project the presenters did during their regular coursework.
I wasn't able to find anyone who had done, or was in the process of doing any original research in an untouched field such as I was doing. Again, my new friend from Maryland was a close match: he was analyzing the contemporary political histories of New Hampshire and Vermont.
I did enjoy the evenings, though. I met some pretty interesting people whose ideas I enjoyed hearing. Other people I met weren't nearly as engaging. With 2200 people, I guess I was bound to find some bad apples.
I was writing and rewriting my paper for the conference Proceedings journal until Tuesday afternoon before I left on my 6:50 a.m. flight. I never expected it to be accepted, but I hadn't flown 1400 miles, blowing off six classes to not give it a shot.
I labeled it as a "Work in Progress" at the encouragement of my advisor. I suspect that helped the paper's chance for acceptance. A day after I submitted it, paying my $55 fee, I went back to the judging booth and found that the paper had indeed been accepted into the journal. i was hovering around the table, watching other students retrieve their packets and heard a lot of congratulations, so part of me suspects that anyone who submitted a paper was granted intial acceptance. As another professor told me after I got back to the University of Minnesota, publication is publication.
I've got to add some end notes and citations and expand my conclusion a bit, but beyond that, the paper is good to go. I've got a month to do that and will probably blog about that when the time comes.