The symposium offers students the opportunity to present their own original papers at a professional conference, in a 12-15 minute presentation. Regardless of your career plans, preparing and presenting your paper is a great learning experience. It provides an opportunity for you to get public speaking and professionalization under your belts in preparation for graduate school, law school, public health, etc. We strongly encourage you to consider submitting a good paper you have written in one of your sociology classes. If you are considering a paper for presentation, talk with the instructor for whom you wrote the paper to see if your paper is appropriate.