Categories: phd
Tags: conference, Cambridge
Date: 10 April 2008 22:01:20
So, a couple of weekends ago I finally got to go to Scaryconference. I eventually (day before, pretty much) rewrote my talk incorporating feedback from my work in progress seminar, and the Saturday morning at the crack of dawn saw me heading out to the airport, where I met up with (what felt like) half my department to get the plane down south. The conference was in Cambridge, at one of the colleges, and after picking up our registration stuff and finding our rooms and grabbing lunch it was straight into the schedule. The first session (there were several sessions concurrent) saw me chairing - I'd been asked at the last minute (so they obviously weren't desperate, no not at all). That seemed to go OK, and then the following session was my panel. I was second to speak, after a (it has to be said) really dull Russian woman - I've still no idea what she was on about, as I kept drifting off. My biggest fear, that I would run over time, didn't happen, and afterwards I could relax and listen to the other two presenters on my panel, an American academic that I'd heard of before (and liked what I'd read of hers, so being on the same panel as her was a bit daunting) and another Russian, another PhD student like me. Afterwards we had questions, mine were nothing too taxing which was a relief, though one of the questioners came up to me afterwards and started with "I really liked your presentation". Which you just *knew* was going to be followed by a litany of everything he hated about it (it's like "I'm not a bigot, but [bigoted statement]", or "I'm not racist but [there are too many immigrants]" or whathaveyou). I rambled on a bit to him and he eventually shuffled away, and talking with my supervisor afterwards (she had been in the audience) she said that this particular person always turns up and harangues people, and actually in this case he was wrong and I was right, so I felt justified in ignoring him :)
I'm so pleased my panel was on the first afternoon, it meant that afterwards I could relax, whereas most of my friends weren't presenting till the next day so were still a bit nervous. We wandered out around Cambridge (though weren't able to get into any of the posh college grounds as there appeared to be a graduation going on), and in the evening went for a meal with a group of Russians who were presenting papers alongside my friends. I was the only non-Russian speaker there, so occasionally they took pity on me and talked to me in English, but most of the time there was lots of Russian going on so I was a bit out of it. But I didn't mind at all, as I was rather tired I was quite happy just to sit there shovelling my food in! I'm such a lady.
The next day I saw my friends present their (really excellent) panel - I've talked with them so much about their work, and they were an enormous help to me before I went on fieldwork as they'd all done it before me so were able to reassure me a lot, but I had never seen any of them present their work formally so it was great to get the chance to hear them talk about their work. I then went to a random panel about stuff I didn't know much about, but as I had the headache from hell I left that early and crashed out for a bit, before going into Cambridge to wander round for a bit. In the evening there was a formal dinner - fortunately I managed to sit near friends, and we ended up having a great old time. Most of them have either written up or are about to finish, I'm going to really miss them next year when the last of them goes. Sometimes academics can be quite cringeworthy (especially when they're drunk) but thankfully we managed to avoid the worst excesses of drunken leery academics.
The final morning I went to another session of stuff I didn't know much about (about different aspects of religion), and yet again found myself amazed at the different subjects that people end up researching. Unfortunately the one session that I really wanted to go to clashed with the rather important fact that we needed to get a flight back to Glasgow, but I will (hopefully eventually) get round to emailing the presenters and asking them to email me their presentations, so hopefully I won't have missed out too much.
So, my first academic conference, and I appear to have survived. I've sent off abstracts to a couple of other conferences, if I get to speak at those then I shall basically be rehashing the talk I gave at this one. But there also is the possibility of submitting an abstract to speak at a conference in Helsinki in December which would be exciting, I've never been there before and besides, I think it's about time after eastern Europe and Birmingham that I went on a proper jolly.