I'm having trouble getting data from a ResultSet object. Here is my code:

    String sql = "SELECT type FROM node WHERE nid = ?";
    PreparedStatement prep = conn.prepareStatement(sql);
    int meetNID = Integer.parseInt(node.get(BoutField.field_meet_nid));
    prep.setInt(1, meetNID);

    ResultSet result = prep.executeQuery();
    result.beforeFirst();
    String foundType = result.getString(1);

    if (! foundType.equals("meet")) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException(String.format("Node %d must be of type 'meet', but was %s", meetNID, foundType));
    }

The error trace:

Exception in thread "main" java.sql.SQLException: Before start of result set
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:1072)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:986)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:981)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:926)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ResultSetImpl.checkRowPos(ResultSetImpl.java:841)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ResultSetImpl.getStringInternal(ResultSetImpl.java:5656)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ResultSetImpl.getString(ResultSetImpl.java:5576)
    at nth.cumf3.nodeImport.Validator.validate(Validator.java:43)
    at nth.cumf3.nodeImport.Main.main(Main.java:38)

What am I doing wrong here?