Goals

We are hosting another iteration of the small meeting we had last year, and I am in charge again.  Mostly, this is very cool.  I'll get lots of exposure, it helps build the reputation of our institute, and it will be a very cool meeting. But, I don't want people to see me as a postdoc who organizes meetings instead of doing research.  So, now it's my mission to push, push, push this one special experiment far enough for me to have something neat to present. 

There is some perfume I want real bad, but it is super expensive.  I have decided that I will buy it when all of my PhD papers are accepted for publication.

Ten years

It was ten years ago this week that I went to my first meeting, which means I've been doing this work for a decade.  Wow. 

I recently went to a new-to-me meeting (where I suspect I missed the chance to meet a bunch of bloggers - boo!) that was pretty interesting. Not my people, exactly, but I learned some science and had good interactions with my boss. It's weird starting over. I know tons of people at my normal meetings, but very few at this one. In a way it felt like the first few meetings I attended, except that I now know how to navigate a meeting and I know a lot more science. I understand how to pick which talks I see, which sessions I skip, how to handle a poster session, how to mingle in the hallways. Fortunately, I was able to go to meals with my boss and various friends of his, so I was never on my own in an awkward way. Yet I didn't feel like a puppy because I went to most sessions on my own.

Now I'm all jazzed up to get some data!