Research Reflections /

Quick Thoughts From the First Academic Conference I Attended (Like, a Year Ago)

I think the best thing to do as an undergrad at a conference is to be observant, since it’s pretty low-stakes at that point. Part of doing this is to see how academics interact to see whether or not you want to do this. What do people wear, how do they speak, what do they talk about, etc.

  1. If you can, ask questions of the speakers after talks! Asking good questions during sessions is powerful (it gets you noticed!)1
  1. There seems to be a rough heuristic that you have to be a decent-ish speaker to become a professor.2 (Virtually all of the professors I listened to were strong speakers; the grad students and post docs were a mixed bag.)

  1. If you can, introduce yourself to people and join conversations; try to fully be a participant.

  2. It’s more natural to network when everyone else is doing it: if everyone seems to be trying to meet new people, it’ll be easier for you to do so as well (I’ve heard that this does not happen at every conference, so I’m pretty sure I just got lucky with that one.)3

  1. There was some informal discussion around the tenure process, burnout, wanting to quit grad school; lots of reference to “writing grants” and “grants being rejected”; some conversation around building the CV, etc.; I also talked to some PhD students who were very ready to quit academia.

  2. Conferences are all about increasing the visibility of what you do and finding out what people in your field-ish are doing - also about increasing your chances of being lucky in the future through access to information

  3. Get people’s contact information while you’re there and write it down somewhere (it’ll be hard to do later, once you’re home). Follow up on things you said you’d follow up on. Don’t be afraid to self-promote a little bit. Have a good answer ready when people ask you what you’re about.

  4. How to dress at conferences: it’s a mixed bag, but pretty casual to be honest unless you’re presenting, and even then, it’s not that formal.

  5. Projecting a certain amount of confidence seems to get people pretty far. I asked a lot of questions and participated as much as I could, so a lot of people assumed I was a grad student. (That was… really weird.)

  1. NTS: I probably want to write a piece about how to ask good questions later. ↩︎

  2. Note from future me: I just realized that tt could also be that professors are more likely to be good at public speaking because they are forced to do it more often, whereas grad students and post-docs likely have varying levels of practice at it. In my field (computer science), it is relatively easy to avoid doing presentations in undergrad. So, if you’re a grad student starting from zero in terms of speaking skills, it’s totally understandable that your presentation skills will be lacking for a few years (especially if, like many students I know, you just don’t care that much about being good at communicating.) ↩︎

  3. Networking works best when the power dynamics are somewhat flat, I think. This is why I have pretty good luck with talking to peers and terrible luck with talking to more senior people (and I don’t just mean at conferences, I mean in general). ↩︎

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