Justin Leonhardt: A Researcher’s Journey to His Flight
By the time I started my second research project – which would last until I graduated – I was very confident in my abilities. I spent time in the lab and had presented at many conferences around South Carolina throughout my junior year. I knew my data extremely well and was very prepared to talk about it again. What I was not prepared for was getting stuck in an airport for several hours trying to get to my gate.
During research problems were extremely common: research included a lot of error messages in our analysis software and a lot of hours of changing the procedure to accommodate those changes. This was fairly common, and I got good at finding solutions to the problems we faced in the lab. However, solving these problems did not prepare me for the issues I faced while trying to get to Oklahoma City to present this research at TriBeta’s National Convention.
My flight started at the Atlanta airport in Georgia. This airport is massive and is split into a domestic flight and an international flight side – which are not connected by any walking paths from the outside. I didn’t drive myself to the airport, and I had to go to the domestic flight side of the airport for my flight. Unfortunately, I was dropped off on the international side of the airport, and my ride had left without either of us realizing the error. In fact, I had printed out my ticket before I realized I was on the opposite side of the airport from where I was supposed to be.
Only when I started looking at TSA did I notice that I was in the wrong place. While this was not my first time flying, it was my first time flying on my own, which meant that this problem was something that I had to solve on my own, which was terrifying.
The good part was that I had arrived extremely early, which gave me time to figure out what I was going to do. I first tried to use an interactive map: a large screen that boldly declared “find your gate” on it. There was a scanner for my ticket, but when I scanned my ticket nothing happened. The screen didn’t say there was an error, it didn’t give any indication of what to do, it just said “working on it” and then reset. After trying the map another few times, trying to see if there was a manual way of inputting my information, and using a different map screen, I decided I needed to try something else. I will admit that I went back to the map every few dozen minutes to try and see if it would start working if I just waited long enough. I don’t think it’s surprising when I say it never did.
The next thing I tried was asking some of the employees for help. Unfortunately, every person whose job was to help people was either busy or gave me very incorrect information: one employee insisted that I had to check in through the luggage drop off and then everything would be fine. The issue was that I didn’t have any luggage to drop off, but the person sent me over to the luggage people regardless. The luggage person then proceeded to charge me for luggage I didn’t have until I explained – several times – that I didn’t have any luggage to check in, and they finally took the charge away, but didn’t help me at all from that point and just kicked me out of the line.
Back at square one (and trying the map again without any luck), I decided to make sure there was a tram in the airport – after all, how would people reach their gates when the buildings are physically separated and far apart? I faintly remembered that there should be a tram, but I hadn’t seen it or any signage for it. Online I found that there was indeed a tram – it even has its own Wikipedia page – but no mention of where it was.
I finally made the decision that because nothing else was working, I should head through TSA. Based on available evidence I had to hope that the tram was on the other side of TSA and that I hadn’t missed it in some inconspicuous corner of the massive international side of the airport. After going through all of TSA I emerged in the section with all the gates, food, and stops.
And right there was the sign for the tram.
With relief I went down the escalator to the tram line and met my next obstacle. My gate was G, but the line when from A to F, and then it skipped to T. Deciding to start with an online search this time, I found nothing about where G gates were in relation to the concourse letters. Signs in the tram itself were not helpful either – which I felt should be an important thing to add to an airport tram – so I had to resort to one thing I did have. Time.
I still had an hour left, and the tram only took a couple of minutes to get to each stop, since they are automated and have multiple cars running at the same time. As a result, I just started getting out at each stop, going up the stairs or escalators, and reading what gates were at each section.
On the fourth stop I saw G gates. It had taken another dozen minutes or so, but I finally had a clear direction. My gate was the farthest one from the tram’s stairs, but I knew where I was going.
At the gate I had some time before people were supposed to start getting on the plane. I noticed that my ticket didn’t have a seat number, something I took note of when it first printed but didn’t have any clue what it meant. A gate employee explained that I didn’t have a seat until literally every other person got on. While this was concerning, there wasn’t anything I could do except wait. When there were just three people left (the other two with the same problem as me) I got a seat number and aisle: a first-class seat, just like that!
It’s not that the rest of the trip had no problems, but after the trip was done, I got to look back and realize that I had to solve many practical problems in that airport to get to the conference despite having limited information. I had gotten confident in my research – running bioinformatics on software and adjusting the procedure to fix outdated steps, collecting samples in uncomfortable heat and doing DNA extraction without supervision, and yet I hesitated here. Even though I couldn’t use my research problem-solving for these issues, I was able to build my confidence in real-world problem-solving.
Justin presenting his research at a TriBeta convention
Justin Leonhardt is Biology major with a Genetics emphasis as well as a Chemistry and Psychology minor graduating in the Spring of 2023. For his Honors Project Justin did his research as well as some conferences that took him to the National TriBeta Conference the previous summer in Oklahoma City as well as online, all while going around Upstate South Carolina for soil sample collection and spending hours in the lab each week. After Lander, Justin plans to go to graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. in Genetics.