My experience at the SVP meeting this month gave me a chance to think about the importance of such meetings, particularly for students. Perhaps this was driven by the realization that this year’s SVP was the first where I had no students with me – a far cry from the days when we would pile 5 or 6 of us in a hotel room. As I stood reading a poster or listening to a talk, I found myself thinking over and over ‘my students should be here’. Why is that? Aren’t meetings just about sitting around drinking, you might ask? Absolutely not. Not for serious scientists and students who hope to join them one day.
The exposure to colleagues and peers is a critical part of the scientific process. Your colleagues have new ideas and know of resources that are integral to the development of your projects. No matter how well researched your project is, someone always has something more for you, or a fresh look at the data, or sees a problem others have missed. I’ve never walked away from presenting a poster thinking ‘that was a waste of time’. Going to see the presentations of colleagues and peers is equally eye opening. While some are certainly better than others, if you go in with an open mind you are certain to learn something relevant. What you read in current journals is what was happening 2 or 3 years ago at best. What you see at meetings is what’s happening today. New discoveries are made, methods change rapidly, and the only way to stay abreast of the evolving field is by going to meetings.
And for students, being seen and making connections is absolutely essential. It’s how you form collaborative relationships, get invited to field projects, find advisors for your next degree, meet the people who will one day be hiring you, etc. What potential advisors want to see is that you have made the transition from student to professional researcher, and attending meetings is one of the best ways to demonstrate this to them. And you never know who will end up being the person who is evaluating your application to a PhD program, or reading your grant proposal, abstract, or article submission. You need to allow them to put faces to names, and meetings are a great way to do that.
While meetings do take time and money, they are a worthwhile investment. Money can almost always be found if you start asking early, particularly if you are presenting. By working with fellow students, being frugal and cost sharing, they become even more manageable. And, if you use your time wisely, you will seldom learn more in such a short time as when at a meeting. Plane ahead, prepare for the missed days, coordinate with professors, and you will find the days absent are not a problem.
I encourage you to take advantage of the numerous local meetings, like the upcoming TABA and the TAS meetings, but also be sure to get to a large international meeting at least once a year. If I hadn’t attended such meetings as a student I would never have gotten into the graduate programs I did, nor would I have been offered the fossils from the Koanaka Hills. That meeting encounter led to three field seasons, many presentations and papers, numerous collaborations, an NSF grant, and the material several of you are researching right now.
Lastly, meetings are a reality check of sorts. We have a tendency to see the students in the halls as our peers—the people we are competing against. This is absolutely not the case. The people who you will be competing against for graduate school spots, stipends and ultimately jobs, are not at Sam. They are at schools with names like UT, Princeton, Harvard, etc. Seeing the caliber of work these students are doing is truly inspiring for a professor, and hopefully motivating for a student.
So, let’s make this past SVP the last meeting I go to alone for a while!
One of the primary reasons I applied to graduate school was my experience at AAPA in 2008. Meetings of fellow professionals regardless of the industry foster innovation and new ways of thinking as they expose us to the world at large. As students, we tend to forget there is a world outside of our immediate concerns and the upcoming test or paper that always seems to be looming.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to try to make meetings a priority even if we have to be selective. Planning ahead is crucial to our success so it should be a habit for every semester and school year. The events of this semester are a constant reminder to me that ineffective planning is just as bad as having no plan.
Finances are certainly a big concern for graduate students so it is even more important that the decision to attend a meeting be made well in advance, especially if one is not presenting. I would also point out that SHSU offers funds up to $1000 for one meeting per year if you are presenting. The BSGSO recently requested that the policy be evaluated to allow for the money to be divided among multiple meetings up to the cap of $1000 which would allow for each presenter to attend more meetings.
Thanks Joe. $1000 is pretty generous and more than enough to attend almost any meeting in the US, and even some abroad depending on location. Also, I've never had an undergraduate ask for money for a meeting and not be able to get it from somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI agree that meetings are one of the most important things to attend as a student. In addition to geting ideas, exposing your work, and making contacts with important people, confrences always seem to get me remotivated. As a busy student sometimes everything can get a bit overwhelming and its easy to want to slack off. Seeing so much good work around me always makes me feel ready to kick it back in gear when I get home. I think this is particularly true in the large meetings like SVP. I always look forward to this meeting and even if I am not ready to present anything when abstract submission time rolls around, I still put in an abstarct in April and make sure I am there and ready to present by October. I think that if you don't go to these meetings then you are really missing out on an important part of being a research oriented student. I hope to see you all there next year.
ReplyDeleteMy first semi-ranting (and Hi to Alicia)...
ReplyDeleteAs a young student I didn't realize how valuable meetings were, but that changed very quickly as I started seeing what (and how) other students and faculty were doing. Back in the old days, though, we didn't have much student support and it was done of even more of a shoestring budget than Patrick noted and I well remember dropping a chunk of personal cash on meeting costs. It was the best time for networking, learning techniques, meeting faculty and students with similar interests, and finding out about student and faculty openings.
I'm at the point in my career now where I'm no longer willing to fund travel to meetings totally out of my own pocket, but at the same time I really wish I'd been able to have a first authored paper at SVP so I could have used some of my travel funds to go. The ones I've been to have been the most interesting and academically valuable of any meetings I regularly attend, but there will be more than enough this coming spring to use up all the funding the university provides for me to travel, plus some (at least that part is tax deductible).
For those looking at a busier spring that this fall was, there's the Texas Mammal Meetings in mid February, Texas Academy of Science in early March, Southwestern Association of Parasitologists, Southwestern Naturalists and Tr-Beta in April, and the American Society of Mammalogists in June. Everyone in the group should have material presentable at 2 or more of these venues. Plus, at least two of these (TAS and SWAN) have research grant opportunities.
As Partick says repeatedly (and it needs to be hammered on over and over and over again) there's a LOT of competition out there and no one is likely to succeed or even be taken seriously as a PhD candidate or prospective employee if they haven't presented at multiple venues and acquired at least some grant funding.
I will have to check the rules and limits on the money McNair will spend on trips to non-McNair conferences. But I'm pretty sure that they will pay for me. However this time I didnt think they would pay for me to go to something I am not presenting at personally but as i said, I'll check on that. If so count on me going to anything they will pay for me to.
ReplyDeleteI think everything that has been said already nicely sums up why scientific meetings are an important part of this field. Truthfully, it is money for some of these meetings which keeps me from attending. When meetings are in Texas for two days or so that is one thing, but when meetings are held in London, Philly, Ohio, etc… for four days at a time, that, along with airfare, hotel fees, etc… it tends to add up rather quickly. Now, all that being said, once I start getting paid again, I do plan to attend at least two meetings (TAS and SWAN) this year, if not more (TSM and ASM seem like pretty good options as well)
ReplyDeleteMoney is always a concern for students attending meetings, no doubt. But if presenting, there is definately money out there for the asking. If we start early, it can be done. TAS and SWAN sound good, and hopefully SVP next fall.
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