For many seniors the happiest day of the year is when their dreaded senior thesis is finally completed, handed in and never thought of again. Five senior communication majors breathed a sigh of relief after finishing their papers, but then took their work one step further by presenting their material at national conferences.

Sara Bakker, Lindsay Ferris, Erin Haggerty and Nicole Mike were selected to present their papers at the Southern States Honors Undergraduate Conference in Kentucky, a well-known conference in the communication field April 4-9.

Kim McGraw presented her work at the DePauw University Honors Conference in Indiana March 16-18.

Admission to both conferences is highly competitive. McGraw’s paper was among 30 selected nationwide for the conference. Bakker, Ferris, Haggerty and Mike’s papers were among the 46 chosen for presentation at the prestigious honors conference.

The students said entering their papers in national competitions rather than just writing them for a class grade and forgetting about it was rewarding.

Bakker, who won the Franklin Shirley Award for best research paper for her work on “The Rhetorical Strategy of Hillary Clinton in the N.Y. Senate Debate,” said the competition gave her hard work more meaning.

“I knew about conferences, but while I was writing my paper I never really had any intention of having it submitted,” Bakker said. “I think it made it a lot more meaningful to actually take my paper beyond GW.”

Papers entered in the conference McGraw attended did not compete for prizes, but McGraw said the conference allowed her to share ideas with people outside GW when she presented her paper, “The Relationship Between Television Viewing Habits and Adolescent Peer Friendships.”

“It was an eye-opening experience,” McGraw said. “When you’re here at GW you don’t necessarily think there’s a lot of people outside here that would be interested in the same things you are. It was an incredible learning experience to be able to discuss and share ideas with other undergraduates who were truly interested in my research.

Mike and Ferris received the George Henigan Stevens Communication Award from the Communication Department. Mike, who wrote “Culture and the Use of Compliance Gaining Strategies,” said presenting at the conference made her hard work worthwhile.

“Writing a thesis is a lot of work, time, stress and anxiety,” Mike said. “It was definitely very rewarding having the opportunity to take my work further than just finishing a huge paper and not thinking about it once it’s done. I got the chance to share what I found with other people.”

Erina MacGeorge, a second-year assistant communication professor, prepared the students for their presentations and helped ease their nerves.

“I was a bit nervous for the first 15 seconds, but then you realize you’re talking to friends, not enemies,” Haggerty said. “Professor MacGeorge really spent a lot of time helping us make our presentations extremely high quality. She’s a genius with stuff like that.”

While communication majors have entered their final papers in competition for years, this is the first year MacGeorge took students under her wing. She worked with the five women individually to help them put together their presentations. MacGeorge said she encouraged the students to enter the competitions because she knew all the papers were well done and all five women had worked as teaching or research assistants for her during the year.

The students worked hard to find topics that interested them. Ferris, who chose to write on the topic, “Group Cohesion and Peer Leader Communication,” said she can apply her research to her role as the captain of GW’s women’s gymnastics team.

“I really found so much in my research and my study that I applied to the team this year,” Ferris said. “I think all the things I used from my paper in being the captain of gymnastics really helped the team out a lot this year.”

Ferris, whose paper finished in the top 10 of the conference, said she would like to continue her research on the topic and revise the study to publish in the future.

After presenting her paper, McGraw said she realized she would like to continue her research.

“Going to this conference really made me realize I’d like to do more research,” McGraw said. “You can do more than just write a paper and be done with it. It is so gratifying to know that it doesn’t have to end when you turn it in.”

Although all five students are headed in very different directions after they leave GW, they all said the skills they picked up as communication majors will help them in their future careers.

“Being a communication major has really strengthened my analytical abilities,” Ferris said. “The program is different from other programs. It forces you to learn, apply and then actually use what you’ve learned which some programs don’t really do. You can’t help but learn about yourself and other people.”

Ferris intends to apply what she learned in communication classes to graduate studies in forensic science.

Haggerty, who is considering pursuing a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, said studying communication has challenged and improved her writing ability.

Hoping to pursue a career in law, Bakker said the writing skills she developed working on her paper will be an important asset. Interpersonal communication skills she developed are also vital to success, she said.

McGraw, who plans to pursue a master’s in public relations or some other form of mass communication, said her major is valuable because communication is something that affects everybody.

Mike said she plans to spend some time in Spain to become fluent in Spanish before she enters a nonprofit organization. Communication classes have taught her to analyze and think critically, Mike said. She said she can apply the major to any professional field she chooses.

MacGeorge said working closely with the students has been rewarding.

“These five women truly represent the best of GW,” MacGeorge said. “They are the kind of students that make teaching especially rewarding.”