Conference Time

This week we have a guest post by the lovely Nerisa Dozo.

On April 12th 2012, a whole gaggle of social psychologists descended upon Adelaide for the annual Society of Australasian Social Psychologists conference.

 
The conference is a 3 day affair packed with key note speeches, post-graduate workshops (How to survive your PhD. How to not kill your supervisor) and talks on everything from breast implants and pole dancing to sexism and unhealthy eating patterns (No, I am not joking). It was a great mix of post-graduate students at so many different stages of their career all the way up to academics with CVs longer than my honours thesis. This mix meant networking was so easy and fun to do. You got to talk to other students about your different projects and you got to talk to academics in the field who gave many different ‘do’s and don’ts’. Three days flew by and you were left feeling both exhausted and excited. There is hope to get that PhD done, or at least you can email one of those academics and beg for an RA position.

Nerisa.

-UPDATE- Additional information available in the recent Psychobabble podcast below.

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I also received an anonymous post that adds some additional insight into the conference experience.

Conferences are an exercise in self-punishment. You have to present a respectable image because when you attend a conference you are representing not only yourself, but your advisors, your university, and your discipline. Your respectability is judged by your presence at talks and the quality of your questions. This behaviour conflicts with the image you present after 5pm on each conference day, where you will socialize with other attendees, drink with attendees, go to dinner with attendees (and drink some more), before heading out for more drinks. What results the next morning is a delicate balance between maintaining both a respectable image and consciousness (or even suppressing your vomit reflex).

While (IMO) it's imperative you attend as many talks as you can, you can, of course, decide not to drink as much as you can. But who would want to do that...?

If you have an interesting psychology conference experience you wish to share, or if you are interested in writing an article for the UQ Psyc Blog, send me an email at dustinvenini (at) gmail (dot) com

Cheers,

Dustin