On Wednesday, October 12th, twelve of our officers arrived at LAX boarding the flight that brought us to the long awaited national conference in Chicago, Illinois. Our flight arrived at O'Hare Airport in Chicago at around 5:30 am on Thursday. Despite the lack of sleep and a long tiring flight, the group was excited to see Chicago, some for the very first time. We arrived at our hotel, Embassy Suites and delved into some hot continental breakfast and coffee. After an hour of eating, members of Team Tech quickly changed and got ready for their presentation practice at the conference center. In groups, we allmade our way to the conference center for check-in and registration and for the welcome luncheon that awaited us. After eating lunch, we started to explore the conference center and the various workshops that took place from 10 am to 5 pm each day of the conference. That night we had dinner at the "hospitalities suites" hosted by different companies that attended the conference where we not only enjoyed delicious food but also began our hunt for freestuff. We were glad to be in bed after a long exhausting day of adventure. 
The next day was again full of enlightening workshops and most importantly the big career fair. All of the officers attended the career fair where we were able to talk to the many companies that were recruiting interns and full time employees. I was able to talk to the biotechnology companies that were there and even had a great conversation with one of the
representatives from Life Technologies. The career fair was definitely an eye-opening and great learning experience. We had dinner at one of Chicago's famous pizzerias and tried amazing Chicago deep-dish pizza.
On Saturday, many of the officers explored Chicago, after finally being able to catch up on some sleep. We walked around downtown Chicago, checked out shops on Michigan Avenue, as well as the many landmarks including the Bean which reflected the entire city of Chicago. As a part of the adventure, we were able to bond and get to know each of the officers more. That night, we attended our last event of the conference, the Celebrate SWE banquet. There, we heard encouraging speeches from the different keynote speakers and even got to experience Chicago's famous entertainer, Roxy Bellows. The conference came to a smooth close, and we traveled back to our hotel.
We were able to sleep in on Sunday for a little bit before we had to catch our flight at 1 pm back to Los Angeles. We were all tired after finally arriving back at LAX around 4:30 pm. All in all, I thought this was a very rewarding and valuable experience that I'm sure all of us officers would cherish for a very long time.
Tiffany Yeh
Historian
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