D’uh. But I didn’t fully realize this for myself until recently. Reflections on a few days at Congress. An excerpt:
What’s striking for me about this experience is how little time I spent at actual conference sessions, and how much networking I did instead. During my PhD student days, going to a conference meant, well, going to the conference: attending sessions, sitting through lunch-time keynotes and dinner-time award presentations, joining in evening group activities. When coffee breaks ended, I hurried into a session. I remember once skipping an afternoon to go to the Columbus Zoo. I felt like I was breaking a rule — and probably only did it because a professor of mine instigated the outing. I realize now that I treated conferences like they were courses: a graduate student doesn’t simply skip classes; why would I act differently at a conference?
Read the full post over at University Affairs.
