Was reading an IEEE Proceeds paper today.

Suddenly was reminded of the undergrad days when every third person i knew in college did like a paper presentation. It was a hot thing at 1 time, like in the 3rd year i guess. The wildest things - like , design of optimal blue-tooth technology ( o yeah..papers with such 'explosive' titles would find takers at umpteen colleges), State of the art Neural network (this was another perennial topic at different presentations) along with an occasional HVDC/AC topic !
Even I did some stuff on some design of super-efficient resonant converters (phew !) . Preparations were no laughing matter ! Most of the focus was on using the best software tools to write our stuff and do plots (what plots !) along with some occasional reference on google as to what some scientist in Estonia was actually upto on our paper topic . Our lecturers would be very encouraging and appreciative when we used to tell them about working on a paper presentation. They werent amused, however, when we asked them a few questions on whatever we understood from that publication from Eastern Europe !
The best part however was the trip to the college. Most colleges always had some culturals going on at the same time ;participate in them. I cant forget once at Mepco engg college, when we pocketed quite a cool sum in all this but dint actually win anything in the event for which we actually went there ! Then, collect the bus/train fare from the organizing committee with a smug smile; watch a movie and make umpteen jokes on any/many of the organizers on our way back home !

Boy, that was fun. Paper Presentations.