In the Middle of Everything, a Conference
Last Wednesday was the Maritimes Protistology Conference. Because the New Brunswick groups were all either writing grants or applying for tenure, and the Prince Edward Island group was on a field trip, this amounted to the Nova Scotia Protistology Conference. That amounted to the Dalhousie-Plus-Two-or-Three-Other-Labs Protistology Conference, but given the fact that Dalhousie has more protistology labs than all the rest of the Maritimes put together, it was still a pretty good turnout.
I did not present anything. I had no poster. This was a bit of a sore spot, as not only am I itching to present things at a conference, I am also itching to get the sort of data that can be presentable, which I have managed with astounding consistency failed to get in the year that I have been here. I take this in my stride, of course: if what I were trying to do were easy, it would have been done already. My frustration was eased by my advisor nominating me to be the audiovisual tech for the conference, which at the very least made me feel useful. I like feeling useful.
My duties went fairly well. Only one person was unable to get their presentation to work on my computer (oddly, his computer, which he used instead, was also a Mac), PowerPoint only crashed once (and restarted impressively quickly), and only one presentation did not work correctly (it took inordinate amounts of time to advance through a time-lapse sequence). The food was decent, and the coffee good (although the tea was terrible), although for reasons that fail to be obvious, the latter was removed when the former was brought out. As everybody was leaving after the end-of-conference wrap-up comments, my advisor stopped everybody and asked for a round of applause for my service, which was enthusiastically given and embarrassedly received.
Like all conferences, this one left me quite exhausted. Of course, the late nights did not help either. The night before, we had a pre-conference trip to a pub, which fortunately ended at around eleven; the night after, the post-conference trip to another pub lasted considerably longer. This is to be expected, of course; scientists as a whole like to party more than their stereotype allows, but they do tend to party responsibly.
That, of course, rendered my Thursday morning rather inefficient, but my mornings tend to be rather inefficient anyway, so no harm was done there. More frustrating was the interruption to the week's lab work. However, such is inevitable when conferences are involved, and for all the frustration, they are a welcome inconvenience.
Geekily enough, I am more frustrated at next Monday's being Labour Day. I may just show up in the lab and do some work anyway.
I did not present anything. I had no poster. This was a bit of a sore spot, as not only am I itching to present things at a conference, I am also itching to get the sort of data that can be presentable, which I have managed with astounding consistency failed to get in the year that I have been here. I take this in my stride, of course: if what I were trying to do were easy, it would have been done already. My frustration was eased by my advisor nominating me to be the audiovisual tech for the conference, which at the very least made me feel useful. I like feeling useful.
My duties went fairly well. Only one person was unable to get their presentation to work on my computer (oddly, his computer, which he used instead, was also a Mac), PowerPoint only crashed once (and restarted impressively quickly), and only one presentation did not work correctly (it took inordinate amounts of time to advance through a time-lapse sequence). The food was decent, and the coffee good (although the tea was terrible), although for reasons that fail to be obvious, the latter was removed when the former was brought out. As everybody was leaving after the end-of-conference wrap-up comments, my advisor stopped everybody and asked for a round of applause for my service, which was enthusiastically given and embarrassedly received.
Like all conferences, this one left me quite exhausted. Of course, the late nights did not help either. The night before, we had a pre-conference trip to a pub, which fortunately ended at around eleven; the night after, the post-conference trip to another pub lasted considerably longer. This is to be expected, of course; scientists as a whole like to party more than their stereotype allows, but they do tend to party responsibly.
That, of course, rendered my Thursday morning rather inefficient, but my mornings tend to be rather inefficient anyway, so no harm was done there. More frustrating was the interruption to the week's lab work. However, such is inevitable when conferences are involved, and for all the frustration, they are a welcome inconvenience.
Geekily enough, I am more frustrated at next Monday's being Labour Day. I may just show up in the lab and do some work anyway.