{"id":2823,"date":"2017-12-22T15:19:15","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T15:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/?p=2823"},"modified":"2017-12-22T15:19:15","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T15:19:15","slug":"travel-and-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/2017\/12\/22\/travel-and-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"Travel and learn!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Best part of doing a PhD? Conferences! When you finally manage to do some meaningful research, it\u2019s time to present it to a wider audience. In other words, pack your suitcases and bon voyage! I know that attending conferences might be a bit overwhelming in the beginning, so here are a few tips to make the most of them.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Find a good conference. If you\u2019re as lucky as I am and have a great supervisor, she or he will suggest interesting events to you. Otherwise you\u2019ll need to do the work yourself. However, at Imperial we\u2019re flooded with e-mails advertising scientific events, there\u2019s also Google and your colleagues who can give you some advice. Personally I like to choose small conferences where you can actually talk to other participants, but you\u2019ll need to figure out yourself what you prefer.\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_2824\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2824\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2824\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/files\/2017\/12\/DSC_0019-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2824\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poster on a fabric &#8211; a pretty cool thing.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>\n<li>Send your abstract before the deadline. Yes, I mean it \u2013 even if you think you aren\u2019t ready, apply to give a talk or present a poster. Some conferences are pretty competetive, so don\u2019t worry if you get rejected (it happened to me many times in my first year). If they accept you though, get preparing! I already wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/2017\/11\/27\/lets-talk-about-talks\/\">a few words about giving oral presentations<\/a>, hope that helps. For the poster, one important thing: make sure the airline you\u2019re flying with is ok with a poster tube (Ryanair isn\u2019t). Otherwise I strongly recommend a poster printed on a fabric, you\u2019ll definitely get attention of other participants \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>At the actual event it might seem hat it\u2019s obligatory to attend every single talk you possibly can. Don\u2019t even try\u2026 After one day you\u2019ll be exhausted and you won\u2019t understand a word, trust me. It\u2019s ok to skip some talks that don\u2019t seem interesting so that you can fully focus on the ones you really want to hear. Having said that, don\u2019t stick to the topics you feel comfortable with. Ask around, maybe there\u2019s an excellent speaker coming up who can introduce you to a completely new field? Broaden your horizons, seriously! You\u2019ll have enough time during your PhD to focus on your tiny area.\n<figure id=\"attachment_2825\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2825\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2825\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/files\/2017\/12\/138-0118-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2825\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poster presentations are also a great opportunity to chat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Talks, presentations\u2026 they\u2019re all important. But conferences are all about networking! I always get excited when I can see faces hiding behind names I know from the key papers in my field. Coffee breaks, dinners, informal chats \u2013 you can learn way more talking to people than sitting in lectures. And make great friends, that happened to me already \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2826\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2826\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2826\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/files\/2017\/12\/DSC_0009-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2826\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A weekend in Vienna after a very intense conference.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Most importantly, have fun! Make sure you learn new things, but also that you enjoy the experience. Spend as much time with other participants as possible, join the trips, conference dinner, visit local attractions in your free time. I like to add the weekend to my stay at the conference venue, to get a mini-vacation. This way I visited Paris, Vienna, Copenhagen, Philadelphia\u2026 Trust me, you want other researchers to remember you as a cheerful young scientist, not an exhausted zombie. This will pay off in the future.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Best part of doing a PhD? Conferences! When you finally manage to do some meaningful research, it\u2019s time to present it to a wider audience. In other words, pack your suitcases and bon voyage! I know that attending conferences might be a bit overwhelming in the beginning, so here are a few tips to make [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1026,"featured_media":2830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127224,7269,53,95710,268,191443,625,163723,127784,114,200972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communicating-science","category-conferences","category-events","category-leisure","category-life","category-life-advice","category-phd","category-potentially-actually-useful-stuff","category-practical-advice","category-travel","category-travelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2823"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2831,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823\/revisions\/2831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}