Conferences

In the beginning (grad school year 1) conferences were quite exciting. It was a very tangible way of being involved in The Science. The poster sessions, the talks, I ate it all up, went to anything even vaguely interesting. And it all seemed interesting since I was still new to the field.

A few years later (prelim era), I was more focused on learning my area of research. Going to only the posters and presentations specifically on my small research area, because I needed to become an expert and I didn’t have the brain energy to waste on things I didn’t need to know, as interesting as they may seem (in theory).

During the dissertation era, when I was searching for a postdoc I went out of my way to attend a lot of conferences. I attended 5 or 6 in a year(depending on if you count “workshops”). That’s definitely the most I’d been to in such a time period, and I don’t really recommend it. Perhaps it would have been more fun had I not be stressed about employment and my dissertation, or if the conferences had been in exciting locations. My field doesn’t really do exciting location all that often.

Anywho, after that I thought I’d take a conference break. I do enough traveling as it is. I will be heading back out into the fray and have two conferences this summer. To what end? I have posters at both conferences. No biggie. When I was looking for postdocs I did a bit of networking. I guess that’s still a possibility, though thing are a bit different. The TT job market really has nothing to do with the postdoc market. The postdoc market is either via word of mouth or email forwards. TT jobs have much more of a standard operating procedure. It doesn’t seem there’s anything to be done other than apply (and have a shiny CV).

When walking around the poster session talking to folks I do find myself thinking.

Oh look, Dr. Interesting is at Awesome State U. I wonder if they are hiring this coming year. Probably not, but what if they are? I’d better not make a bad impression here, what if she remembers when he sees my CV? Oh crap she’s talking to me, what did she say? Did she ask me what I thought about that last talk, about some controversial new paper? No, no she just wanted to know if my former advisor is here because she owes him 20 bucks.

Unlikely, but still, these are the thoughts that go through my head.