Alright so I've been a PhD student for a while, I've been to my fair share of conferences. The pandemic has reduced that number, for sure, but I've still been. During my postbac I went to the fruit fly meeting, and I've now attended a few conferences virtually. Last week though I went on my own to a smaller, in person conference, and it blew my mind how much I enjoyed it.
In the past I've only attended really large conferences with hundreds of people, this one was much smaller. There was only one session going on at a time, maybe 2 during lunch, and the poster sessions had maybe 20 posters being presented at once. This is small, the fly meeting had hundreds of attendees! It also was a conference that I went to on my own, none of my other lab members came with me and I didn't know anyone who would be there. (I ended up running into a collaborator, but we just chatted and didn't like hang out or anything.)
The result was I felt much more energized! Usually I practically destroy myself trying to get to every session, but this time I skipped whatever I didn't want to see and wandered around the city (Madison, Wisconsin, I'm sure I'll write about it eventually) or just took a break. And since I knew no one there was no pressure to do everything or look like a slacker. It could be more of a vacation than work.
I need to do this more often, it was so fun and a really lovely way to balance work and travel. And I really like traveling by myself so it wasn't that difficult for me. Time to start looking for next semester I guess!
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