04/15/2017
In the late spring of 2016, after begging my advisor for several months, I submitted an abstract to attend a conference in Scotland. Academic conferences are normally held in awesome places to visit, but by the luck of the draw, the conferences I had attended up to that point had basically been visits home, to Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. And while I originally saw the location as Scotland and thought “Sign me up!,” there was also a new session in the conference that perfectly fit my research topic. I was hired as the student journalist for the conference, which came with free lodging and a daily allowance for food, meaning my school only paid for the airfare and I was on my way!
An additional stroke of luck was my advisor having visited Scotland many times and encouraging me to take an additional week to explore, which I did without complaint. The only downside was the weather. I know the UK is famous for their dreary, rainy days, but two classmates had gone to Scotland for a different conference in the summer and had mostly sun. By the time I arrived in the fall, it was practically seven straight days of rain.
Below are the blog posts I wrote up about Scotland, which generally follow my route around the country. I even drove! (Sorry Scotland.) Pages will become available over the next couple of weeks.
Isle of Skye
Loch Ness
Edinburgh
emilyberkson 