Some General Tips for Successful CSAS Conference Attendees
(or, The “Do as I Say, Not as I Do” Collection)
By Jacklyn Weier and Ethan Ingram
Congratulations! You have been accepted to your first academic conference. Or maybe you just want to go for fun; that is cool too. Once you have received this information, you will probably have at least a couple of months before shipping off. That gives you plenty of time to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible. It also gives you plenty of time to ignore preparing and to put off working on your presentation until you slap it together the week (or days, or hours) before it is due! While we don’t advocate this, this is often common and natural behavior, practiced by undergrads and world-renowned scholars alike. [BUT see an important caveat on this in the comments ] So here are some general things to keep in mind and work towards as you plan for your first conference:
Before the conference
At the conference
After the conference:
FOLLOW UP. As Victor Turner would put it, the conference is a liminoid experience, a diversion from the daily drudgery of academic life that tends to bog down all of the big and bold ideas that brought us here in the first place. These events are intended to reinvigorate and inspire, and so use this energy in a productive manner. Remember all those notes you were supposed to write-up? Now go and type them up again, and begin to explore them. See if your library has any books that were recommended to you. If you said you would contact someone after the conference, try to do so in a timely manner when they can still remember your meeting. Use the advantages that you have been given to improve your standing work and to consider future endeavors.