One of my favorite gradstudenting how-to books is "Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or Ph.D" by Robert Peters. In this book there is a chapter called "Playing politics: Building a reputation" with advice on such issues as:
1) Making contacts with others in your discipline
2) Building your professional image
3) Being respectful to departmental support staff
4) Serving on academic committees
5) Publishing scholarly papers
6) Attending, presenting at, and even organizing academic conferences
That last point is one I have been thinking a lot about lately, as I have just returned from my disciplinary organization's annual conference in Orlando. I was debriefing yesterday with a fellow attendee and she observed "There were really several conferences going on at the conference."
I agree.
And that is something that few graduate students recognize soon enough in their graduate school careers.
Of course there is the conference that you pay for with your registration fees. That will usually get you a program in the mail in advance, and if your conference is anything like mine, that program may include a nifty planning chart organized by day, session, and time slots so you can keep track of what you want to attend, when, and where. Also listed will likely be the titles of the presentations and the names of the presenters...the formats of the presentations (e.g., poster sessions, papers, symposia, round tables, plenary talks, etc)...and information about the city where the conference is being held.
All that is important. But not as important as the conferences you don't actually "pay for." Some of these concentric conferences within conferences:
The Lobby/Bar/Elevator Conference. The best piece of advice about conferences--besides "GO!"--is to, as much as possible, try to stay at the hotel that is the site for the majority of the sessions. Expensive, yes. But often safer and more time saving (no wandering around after dark in a strange city trying to find your way back to your economy-lodge, no waking up at the crack of dawn to catch a bus to the conference hotel). And, more likely to result in those wonderful chance meetings during "down times." It's amazing the conversations you can have with the Head of Department X while you both are trying to figure out how to wrangle ice out of the 12th floor ice machine. And it even gives you a pleasantly satisfying "inside joke" to share the next morning before a session when you find yourself next to Dept X Head who is standing around with other Big Names...
The Academic Family Reunion Conference. There we were, standing in front of a poster in the Junior Ballroom of the Conference hotel: four "generations" of advisees of my masters' thesis advisor... Over the course of four days we nod and smile to each other, exchange pleasantries and Was so-and-so there during your time?'s: several generations of "siblings" of the same PhD program at the U of MN... As a graduate student, with both a masters' and PhD advisor and committee members, and with two separate cohorts of graduate student colleagues (many who have gone on to great things), I am part of a vast network of folks who share some of my same "scholarly DNA". And no place is it so possile to connect with these folks than at a national conference. This is especially true in a medium sized field like child and family studies, but I suspect that something similar occurs in mega-fields like psych, sociology, biology, history.
The Wrong Room Conference. It's amazing the number of conferences that occur in hotels all over the world at any given day of any given week of any given month all year long. Invariably there will be other big events going on in your hotel during your conference. And if you are as goof-prone as me, at some point during your years of conference attendance, you will wander into a very intereting session that is, alas, not affiliated with your particular organization. But never mind. There can be a reason for such blunders. I know of at least two people who found themselves in the most interesting sessions this way. I myself have met someone from my own University doing work I was very interested in--and previously unaware of--this way. This last conference my mother and I even ran into people who just may be our long lost relatives who were with a huge contingient in Orlando for the Florida Classic (Bethune-Cookman wins over FAMU).
In short, being a regular attendee at the annual conference is one of the easiest, most effective, and most enjoyable ways to accomplish many of the unwritten, but important tasks of graduate school. I have never regretted going. And this year I even got a chance to reflect on my scholarly interests by the side of the hotel pool in the golden sunshine. (Maybe I was just lounging, more than reflecting, but that's a trivial point.)
I can't wait until Phoenix next year!