Chelen Johnson
For me as an educator, it was really rejuvenating to come out here (and bring a student with) and dive into actual astronomical research.
[working at the same level as the students] changes how you approach teaching. Being surrounded by people, whether they're older or younger, who are asking these awesome questions, it’s liberating.
To me what stood out [at my first AAS] was the wide variety of work – from characterization of the structure of the Milky Way (more of a challenge than I ever knew!) to the search for and characterization of exoplanets to the understanding of how quasar evolution relates to the origins of the Universe.
