I remember the very first time I attended a Bay Area Society for Neuroscience Youth meeting. My mom had just dropped me off at the Los Altos Library, insisting that I attend the event because it would be “a good learning experience for me.” I remember complaining to my mom about having to go and rolling my eyes every time my mom repeated the “good learning experience” thing, thinking that this whole organization would be a huge waste of my Sunday afternoon–an afternoon I could have spent finishing my school homework instead.
I remember walking inside the community meeting room and looking around for what to do next. I knew nobody there, so I stood there awkwardly trying to figure out what to do. I guess my confusion was abundantly obvious because, immediately, someone–who would later go on to become good friends with me–tapped me on the shoulder, smiled at me, and said, “You look new. I’m Allison! You can sign in here, and then you come join my friends and I at our table.” It was weird. I hadn’t even said one word to her, and she had already introduced herself to me and was ready to become friends with me.
Through the course of that one meeting, during which I got to perform a very cool dissection of a sheep brain, I realized that my mom was in fact right: Bay Area Society for Neuroscience Youth was an extremely meaningful organization, with the wonderful purpose of bringing Bay Area schools together due to our common interest in neuroscience. I didn’t know it at the time, but Bay Area SfN Youth would become one of the biggest parts of my high school journey. I would actively pursue my interest in neuroscience by participating in this group, and I would become part of an amazingly dedicated, friendly, inclusive, and intelligent group of people that led the organization.
After realizing all this in my very first SfN Youth meeting, I decided that I would take every opportunity to participate and contribute to the organization. The very first year I joined (2018-2019) I was a student representative, which meant that I contributed to the organization by promoting its events in my school. However, I wanted to do more, so I joined the Public Relations Committee, which was in charge of managing social media and maintaining the website. I was responsible for managing the SfN Youth social media, Instagram and Facebook. I came up with the idea to create Daily Facts that I could post on our Instagram and Facebook every day in order to provide our members with interesting information about the Brain as well as keep our members active and engaged in our organization.
Here are examples of Daily Facts I made:
Because I was so deeply involved in SfN Youth the first year I joined, I decided that I would be a good fit for their core team as well. So, when the time came for Core Team Applications, I applied to be Bay Area Society for Neuroscience Youth’s Public Relation Officer. To my surprise, I got the position!
During the 2019-2020, I was much more deeply involved in the organization. I was part of all our decision-making in terms of what events to hold and where to hold our events. I was also in charge of communicating with student representatives and external companies and presenting during our monthly meetings (instead of just listening to the presentation, as I would do when I was a student representative). But, the most important part of my job was to create promotional material, such as profile pictures and flyers, that the entire organization would use to advertise our events (see below for examples of the profile pictures and flyers I made). I was also in charge of maintaining our website; however, from the very beginning of the year, I realized that our website’s design was not great and that it was also very slow. So, I redesigned the entire website and continued working on it throughout the school year. Check out the updated, sleek, redone version of the SfN Youth website here: bayareasfnyouth.org
Profile Pictures and Flyers from all the 2019-2020 meetings:
In the past two years that I’ve been part of Bay Area SfN Youth, the organization has become a crucial part of my life. I look forward to that Sunday every month where I get to meet a fantastic group of motivated and smart minds, all while learning about our favorite subject in some new way, from guest speakers to workshops to interactive activities, like dissections.
Although the 2020-2021 SfN year will look drastically different from past years due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, I look forward to seeing how the SfN team and I can work past this challenge to create yet another memorable year of engaging in neuroscience.
