apss '09 (ii)*

4.1. sunday is 'trainee day', where graduate students gather and listen to one another talk non-stop about how all the work their advisors have made them do, and persuading themselves that they actually wanted to do it in the first place.

4.2. in order to get anyone at all to attend this, they get the people who have won travel awards and hold the checks ransom till the end of the day.

4.2.1. sneaky bastards.

4.2.2. we're each made to sign up for four sessions, plus a lunch thing where somehow i've been pressganged into giving a talk to a room full of people who don't care about or understand my work.

4.2.3. i suppose the speakers could have been worse. at the very least, there was matt walker, who i'm trying to schmooze up at every available opportunity in case i want do a post-doc in a state where i can actually buy single malt scotch. his talk teaches me a number of things, the most important of which is British Accents FTW.

4.2.4. lunch is awful. my talk goes ok though. i have by now firmly decided that the most unimportant part of giving a talk is its actual content. this is probably not a revelation to anyone who does a lot of public speaking, but i personally get a lot of mileage out of very small things. stepping out from behind the podium for one. you can be quaking in your shoes, but as long as you get out from behind that podium, people immediately assume that you Know What You're Doing.

4.2.4.1. most of the time, i still don't know what i'm doing.

4.2.5. the best part of the day is when this prof from wash. u. stands up and gives us the skinny on how to handle the final years of grad school. he basically says what i've suspected all along, which is: grab all the data you can get your hands on, write it up, stick your name on the front, and claim the paper as yours. i can't remember if i wrote about our little authorship mess a while ago, but the advice basically confirms what i suspected, which was that i was too nice, and was lucky that the advisor was looking out for me. never again.

4.2.5.1. also that experiments mostly don't work, and that you just have to get over it, which is possibly the most depressing thing i've heard all year.

* feel free to insert sleepless in seattle jokes anywhere, i got tired of them the moment i heard where the conference this year was going to be.