random bullets o’ conference

(from worst to best)

• It only clicked when I registered on Saturday that since there was only one session at a time, minus the people who went on the excursion, or who just got bored and left the room, most of the 750+ conference-goers will be in the audience for my talk. I don’t think I’ve ever stood in front of that many people before. The auditorium is huge, too.
• After a day of talks, I have a pretty good sense of the full range of acceptable speaker attire for men* (n = 17), but not so much for women (n = 2). Where are all the women? This is biology, not physics. How can my program admit the opposite ratio of male to female students this year and there are still hardly any women faculty?
• Another underrepresented group of speakers (although more justifiably) at this conference: grad students. My talk has to fit in with those by big, famous people who are talking about their grad students’ work.
• Comfy chairs (this is the transition from bad to good because, while they’re a good thing, they did make it easier to fall asleep.
• Coffee + hot chocolate mix + milk + sugar = much-needed, just-about-palatable caffeine
• Overrepresented at this conference: Commonwealthlandians (and other Commonwealthians). Hearing their lack of accent makes me happy. Although it’s easy to just listen to the sound of their voices rather than the content.
• My advisor said I didn’t need to practise my talk if I didn’t want to**, because I “give good talks”. I guess I was wrong about his reaction last time.
• Finally, the talk that made me happiest combines points 3 and 6 as well as assuaging some of my more general worries. The second scruffiest guy was a C’landian PhD student. For starters, he made me happy because he was so very C’landian, but also because his talk was fairly crap. The science was perfectly good and interesting; he just sounded like it was his first run through it (although he occasionally broke into fluid paragraphs when he started reading from his notes). I may not have much confidence, but I think I can do better than that.

* The scruffiest guy gave the most engaging talk, I thought. And the second scruffiest is at the top of my list.

** I know I should practise, but I really hate speaking to people who know the details of what I’m talking about. I get far more nervous and mess things up more than I would with people who don’t know everything about my project already.