Not That Kind of Doctor - Conferences

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04/05/2023 Added

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Conferences - Ph.D. discussions with Nicholas Husbye and Guy Trainin. www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor and https://mediahub.unl.edu/channels/42980

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[00:00:00.217](upbeat music)
[00:00:09.668]That the balance is that if there's good enough structure
[00:00:13.710]around it and clear expectations,
[00:00:16.710]then our students are really up to the task
[00:00:20.100]and willing to take on big chunks.
[00:00:23.100]Oh, yeah.
[00:00:24.676]It's big chunks
[00:00:25.509]and ambiguity is a challenging combination.
[00:00:29.940]Well, did I tell you that in an exit slip?
[00:00:32.693]No, no.
[00:00:35.010]I'm on my first day introducing writing,
[00:00:37.770]I always have a is there anything more
[00:00:39.060]you'd like me to know or anything you wanna say?
[00:00:42.480]And several of them were like,
[00:00:44.400]I don't feel like this was as systematic
[00:00:47.220]or explicit as it could be.
[00:00:48.540]Like I like these activities,
[00:00:50.220]but I don't know why I would do them.
[00:00:53.010]And I was like, oh. Fair, fair.
[00:00:58.747]Yes.
[00:00:59.580]Okay, so let me revise my lesson plan for the next day
[00:01:03.960]and they're picking it up.
[00:01:07.080]So speaking of up, where are you flying off to today?
[00:01:11.430]I am flying to Washington to go to a conference,
[00:01:15.210]an ARTful Conference.
[00:01:16.470]So, okay.
[00:01:17.880]So I myself am mired in the teaching intensity
[00:01:25.230]of an overload semester.
[00:01:28.320]You're living your best conference life.
[00:01:30.570]I am living my best conference life
[00:01:32.940]because I am under teaching this semester.
[00:01:37.080]I mean, or teaching just enough?
[00:01:39.300]Well, that's true and I'm teaching weekends this semester.
[00:01:43.020]So I spent all of last Saturday with our teachers
[00:01:49.020]who are part of our grant
[00:01:50.400]and I'm going to spend all of the next Saturday with them.
[00:01:54.240]And so I just shifted the load to a different time zone,
[00:01:58.170]so I can have this opportunity to go
[00:02:01.470]and really partake in the conference life,
[00:02:04.170]which I have done more
[00:02:05.280]than I think I've ever done in my life.
[00:02:07.890]I mean it feels like I never see you anymore
[00:02:12.240]because you're always somewhere
[00:02:14.580]where it's either an hour ahead of me
[00:02:17.070]or an hour behind me.
[00:02:18.390]Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:20.040]And so you're just out there living the conference life.
[00:02:26.070]So speaking of conferences,
[00:02:30.150]when you think about going to conferences,
[00:02:33.390]what do you remember about your first conference?
[00:02:36.300]Where'd you go?
[00:02:37.500]Before we go there?
[00:02:38.333]Oh, yeah. Okay.
[00:02:39.390]Before we go there.
[00:02:40.890]Yeah?
[00:02:41.850]Welcome to "Not That Kind of Doctor".
[00:02:43.980]I'm Dr. Nicholas Husbye.
[00:02:45.270]I'm an Assistant Professor here at,
[00:02:47.160]or not an Assistant Professor.
[00:02:48.810]Associate Professor. Associate Professor.
[00:02:50.910]Come on. Oh, I keep forgetting that.
[00:02:55.050]Of Elementary Literacy Education K6 here at UNL.
[00:02:58.440]And this is.
[00:02:59.430]Guy Trainin, I'm a Professor of Education here at UNL.
[00:03:03.780]And today we're talking conferences.
[00:03:05.250]Yes, which I have grown to love
[00:03:08.970]and I've always had a problematic relationship.
[00:03:11.010]I want to know more about that
[00:03:12.390]because I am growing not to love.
[00:03:15.420]Okay.
[00:03:18.738]Before I pushed into our intro,
[00:03:23.940]you'd asked about my first conference.
[00:03:25.470]And I want to say that my first conference
[00:03:30.570]as a teacher was the International Reading Association,
[00:03:37.680]back when they were still
[00:03:38.610]the International Reading Association,
[00:03:40.290]now they're the International Literacy Association,
[00:03:43.800]conference in Toronto.
[00:03:45.660]And I went as a teacher and kept saying,
[00:03:52.710]as we're crossing the border into Canada from Michigan
[00:03:54.467]'cause I lived in Michigan at the time,
[00:03:56.227]"Oh, I'm going to the IRA conference,"
[00:03:58.050]which did not at that point in time, hit very well
[00:04:02.070]and I couldn't figure out why
[00:04:04.230]and got lots of questions.
[00:04:05.460]But anyway, that was my first kind of introduction
[00:04:10.380]to like this is what
[00:04:14.340]a research slash practitioner conference looks like.
[00:04:18.420]And I'd had folks that I had studied
[00:04:22.230]with at Michigan State who were there.
[00:04:24.000]So they helped me kind of navigate
[00:04:25.620]what was happening and going on.
[00:04:27.780]But as a practitioner, I was like what is going on?
[00:04:31.080]What can I bring back on Monday?
[00:04:34.020]Yeah.
[00:04:34.860]And do with my students?
[00:04:35.910]And so that was a really different perspective.
[00:04:37.740]Than later on when I would go to, say,
[00:04:42.510]NCTE which I think was my first big conference
[00:04:46.740]as a researcher, was a much different kind of experience.
[00:04:55.020]Because I wasn't necessarily looking for ideas
[00:04:57.150]to implement in my classroom.
[00:04:58.290]I was thinking through
[00:04:59.490]and about who else is doing work in my general field,
[00:05:02.970]which at that point was really multi-modality and literacy
[00:05:07.260]and networking with those kind of folks to figure out
[00:05:12.060]what kind of projects are they doing,
[00:05:13.680]are there opportunities to interact with one another,
[00:05:18.180]et cetera, et cetera.
[00:05:19.020]And so those are my first two, like big conferences.
[00:05:23.610]What about you?
[00:05:24.720]For me, the first one was the AERA,
[00:05:29.490]American Educational Research Association meeting
[00:05:32.220]in New Orleans, of all places-
[00:05:34.658]Ooh.
[00:05:35.491]For the first time.
[00:05:37.178]And that was definitely a research conference.
[00:05:38.897](alert dings) And I was a doctoral student
[00:05:41.490]at the time.
[00:05:42.390]So I came at it from who's doing work in that field?
[00:05:47.430]What else is happening? And AERA is enormous.
[00:05:51.390]Right.
[00:05:52.223]It's over 10,000 people, most times.
[00:05:53.640]Post pandemic things have changed a little bit,
[00:05:55.560]but there were probably 12 to 14,000 people there.
[00:05:59.340]Lots of sessions over multiple buildings.
[00:06:02.460]I think we had four hotels
[00:06:05.940]and all the conference rooms are there
[00:06:08.310]and you're just trying to navigate.
[00:06:09.960]This was in the days where there was a book still
[00:06:12.360]and you flipped through the 80-page book.
[00:06:16.020]You carried it around,
[00:06:16.853]they'd give you a tote bag just for the catalog,
[00:06:18.657]For the catalog, yes.
[00:06:20.760]And you're quickly trying to find out where to go.
[00:06:23.760]There wasn't anything searchable.
[00:06:25.920]I mean there was a key at the end
[00:06:27.780]and you could just like, oh, I'm interested in writing.
[00:06:30.546]Okay, there's 72 sessions about writing.
[00:06:33.930]That's not super helpful.
[00:06:35.850]All the sticky notes and they were color-coded.
[00:06:38.793]Was that what you mean? Oh, for you
[00:06:39.626]they were colored, yeah.
[00:06:41.040]I had never sticky noted that one.
[00:06:45.570]But I was excited.
[00:06:48.180]I found it really intellectually stimulating
[00:06:50.340]in a way that sometimes, especially,
[00:06:52.950]I'm again going back,
[00:06:54.570]I went to University of California, Riverside,
[00:06:56.580]which is a UC, but it's not one of the big ones.
[00:07:00.630]And also coming from Israel,
[00:07:03.540]I'm like I don't know where I am
[00:07:04.830]even on this map of research.
[00:07:06.900]So the most exciting thing for me was to find out,
[00:07:09.690]yeah, I'm about where I'm supposed to be.
[00:07:11.730]I can have a discussion with people
[00:07:13.890]who are doing research in the field
[00:07:15.210]without feeling like a complete idiot.
[00:07:17.370]So a little less imposter syndrome.
[00:07:21.486]That was the biggest thing.
[00:07:22.319]We were not presenting at that conference.
[00:07:24.330]We presented in the following conferences,
[00:07:26.310]the work we were doing at the time in early reading.
[00:07:29.880]So I've learned that piece.
[00:07:31.560]So the first time I went,
[00:07:32.970]we didn't actually have a presentation,
[00:07:35.010]which was very freeing in some ways.
[00:07:38.430]But the being overwhelmed
[00:07:40.170]by just the sheer size of everything
[00:07:42.690]and running between sessions
[00:07:45.210]and finding out what is the roundtable,
[00:07:47.190]what are poster sessions
[00:07:48.390]and all that, because it was all new to me.
[00:07:51.540]Right, and there's all of these,
[00:07:56.698]like I'm exhausted thinking about all the travel
[00:07:59.820]you're doing right now.
[00:08:01.305](chuckles) Yeah.
[00:08:02.561]Because I keep thinking about,
[00:08:03.394]and here's part of the reason why I'm like,
[00:08:04.920]ugh, conferences.
[00:08:06.990]What are we doing together?
[00:08:08.550]Like do we need couples therapy?
[00:08:11.550]I don't quite know.
[00:08:13.470]Because I just look at a conference
[00:08:15.570]and think what is the value added to who I am
[00:08:20.487]and what I do at that particular point in time.
[00:08:24.750]Because with the advent of just social media,
[00:08:30.000]digital technology, like networking is not as difficult
[00:08:33.810]as I feel like it might used to have been, right?
[00:08:37.589]Yeah. Like so establishing
[00:08:39.450]and maintaining those connections is easy.
[00:08:42.597]And also realizing that at the spot where I am in my career,
[00:08:49.170]I've kind of got my people-
[00:08:51.300]Yes,
[00:08:52.359]and which is different. My academic siblings.
[00:08:54.030]My academic peer group and I kinda know who they are
[00:08:57.900]and am in general touch with them
[00:09:00.900]even when we're not in conferences.
[00:09:03.810]And so thinking about what is it
[00:09:09.510]that this conference is going to do for me?
[00:09:11.790]Um-hmm, and I think that's important.
[00:09:13.533]It's an interesting question
[00:09:15.330]and changes as you're moving from like grad student
[00:09:21.540]to assistant professor-
[00:09:22.890]To associate professor.
[00:09:24.240]Associate professor. When you remember it.
[00:09:25.860]Which I am an Associate Professor?
[00:09:28.290]I am an Associate Professor, period?
[00:09:30.390]I don't know.
[00:09:31.223]Yeah. Whatever that means.
[00:09:32.157]And I think that you're right,
[00:09:33.960]that you have to always think about the costs, right.
[00:09:37.260]There are personal costs and there are-
[00:09:39.090]Costs and costs.
[00:09:40.140]Yes. Yeah. Like time and energy.
[00:09:42.510]Time, energy
[00:09:43.470]and the fact that if you're not on campus teaching,
[00:09:48.570]there's going to be a backlog of things
[00:09:50.580]that you took three, four days and you're away.
[00:09:53.940]It's still waiting for you
[00:09:54.833]and you have to undo that.
[00:09:57.420]And that's discombobulating,
[00:09:58.980]definitely if there's a time difference
[00:10:00.780]and that hurts as well.
[00:10:04.302]And the second cost, and I hate bringing this,
[00:10:07.170]but it's very important I think for justifying,
[00:10:10.530]there's a cost, there's an environmental cost.
[00:10:13.710]You get on an airplane. You travel.
[00:10:15.930]You do all of these things, it's gotta be worth it.
[00:10:19.200]You're not just going for the fun of it,
[00:10:23.580]because that has a cost.
[00:10:25.470]And also it may not be as fun as you'd like it to be.
[00:10:28.903]I mean, yeah. I'm trying to think of the last,
[00:10:33.000]like conferences I feel are stressful,
[00:10:34.620]particularly, if you're presenting
[00:10:36.240]or if you're on the board for that particular organization
[00:10:41.100]or it's stressful because of like life is still going on.
[00:10:48.780]My class is still moving forward.
[00:10:51.210]I have planned for them to be doing stuff while I'm gone,
[00:10:54.330]but chances are they're gonna have questions.
[00:10:56.670]Email is piling up.
[00:10:58.950]Normally, you always have the best intentions.
[00:11:01.140]Oh, my presentation'll be done before I get on the plane.
[00:11:03.600]Or I'll do the presentation-
[00:11:04.740]on the plane.
[00:11:05.850]And then I miss half the conference
[00:11:08.943]because I'm putting together my presentation.
[00:11:10.710]My favorite conferences are the ones
[00:11:12.390]where I present first slot
[00:11:16.740]because I have to have it done.
[00:11:18.780]Yeah. Yes.
[00:11:19.613]And then it's over
[00:11:20.580]and then I'm through it, like it's great.
[00:11:23.370]But that so rarely happens,
[00:11:25.200]even though I often request it, right.
[00:11:27.660]But so there's,
[00:11:32.550]for those who are teaching, pro-tip I feel,
[00:11:36.870]is if there's a conference
[00:11:38.880]that you think you're going to
[00:11:40.050]as you're pulling together your course schedules
[00:11:42.390]at the beginning of the semester, build that in.
[00:11:45.900]Make notes for yourself.
[00:11:47.610]Like, oh, this is gonna be an online asynchronous day.
[00:11:50.670]Here's what you're going to do.
[00:11:52.680]Here's how it fits within the larger scheme.
[00:11:55.050]So you're not playing catch up.
[00:11:58.740]Because you go to this conference,
[00:12:02.700]it's a lot of energy and you come back
[00:12:04.350]and you have to exert a lot more energy to get caught up.
[00:12:08.310]Versus if you can do some planning,
[00:12:09.840]that's a little bit more helpful.
[00:12:10.750]Yeah, and as a result, for the longest time
[00:12:13.890]as a graduate student, I just went when I could
[00:12:16.050]and that has a lot to do with money
[00:12:17.640]and we'll talk about that in a second.
[00:12:19.920]But I used to have, as a young faculty member,
[00:12:23.550]I used to have two conferences.
[00:12:24.720]I had a fall conference and a spring conference.
[00:12:26.610]And my fall conference was usually,
[00:12:28.410]not always, what is now LRA and used to be NRC,
[00:12:33.270]so the Literacy Research Association
[00:12:35.790]and before that it was National Reading Conference.
[00:12:39.690]And so that was a place and that was much smaller.
[00:12:44.910]So we talk about AERA in this huge 12,000, 14,000.
[00:12:48.540]This is a much smaller conference
[00:12:50.190]and that's a conference that for a long time,
[00:12:51.990]I felt at home at.
[00:12:53.760]It was a smaller group of people that I got to know.
[00:12:56.580]Lots of conversations, lots of networking
[00:12:59.730]that I found more useful because it's really hard to network
[00:13:03.600]when you get to a space with 12,000 people
[00:13:06.780]and you're like, I don't know who to talk to
[00:13:09.390]and what to talk about.
[00:13:10.980]And eventually, I found my way around that,
[00:13:12.870]but those are challenges.
[00:13:14.460]So when you say I'm not sure what I'm gaining,
[00:13:17.730]I think it's important to say especially
[00:13:20.307]what do you gain early in your career
[00:13:22.320]when you're going to conferences?
[00:13:24.180]Well, I feel earlier in my career
[00:13:26.430]it was a lot about, like I can sit back
[00:13:30.150]and say, "Oh, I'm in touch with my peer group
[00:13:32.520]who do similar work as I do."
[00:13:35.430]Because I went to those conferences early, right?
[00:13:37.980]Like it was an opportunity to meet these folks, in-person
[00:13:44.490]and then we transitioned that relationship into email,
[00:13:49.170]texting, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:13:51.150]Shared Google Docs.
[00:13:54.570]That's not to say
[00:13:55.500]that there wasn't a function early in my career.
[00:13:58.710]It helped me think through also,
[00:14:01.740]like you had said earlier, where's my niche?
[00:14:05.790]Where's my space?
[00:14:09.900]I don't feel like an imposter,
[00:14:12.566]so I'm not quite sure what that's like.
[00:14:13.410]So I'm gonna work on that.
[00:14:15.060]How do conferences help you not feel like an imposter?
[00:14:20.070]'Cause that I feel like never goes away.
[00:14:22.530]No, it doesn't entirely go away.
[00:14:24.750]In every space, there's a moment where you're like,
[00:14:28.920]is this my space?
[00:14:30.000]I think it's there always,
[00:14:32.370]but you can own a part of that space,
[00:14:35.070]especially in smaller groups.
[00:14:37.020]And so if you find, AERA has Special Interest Groups,
[00:14:41.130]ACTE has TAGs, Topical Action Groups,
[00:14:47.490]the word action is fantastic in there.
[00:14:49.650]And so it's a way to create a smaller group
[00:14:55.320]where you actually get to know people.
[00:14:58.110]At AERA, for a long time
[00:14:59.910]I was part of the Motivation, Special Interest Group.
[00:15:02.460]There's always a dinner.
[00:15:04.110]If you're a student or a young faculty member,
[00:15:06.600]go to that dinner.
[00:15:08.130]It's always fun.
[00:15:09.750]And your strategy, you've mentioned this before
[00:15:12.417]when we were talking about networking,
[00:15:13.950]which maybe we can tile it somewhere here.
[00:15:16.890]I don't know how that works anymore.
[00:15:19.620]But you would sit next to someone,
[00:15:21.510]you'd get up, you'd move and sit next to someone different
[00:15:24.990]because you are a gregarious social butterfly.
[00:15:28.620]And I had to teach myself how to do that,
[00:15:31.860]because the instinct is to stay with your people.
[00:15:33.930]And I always showed up with one or two people from UNL
[00:15:38.160]who are with me and then it dawned on me,
[00:15:40.080]why am I sitting with the people
[00:15:41.430]I talk to three times a week?
[00:15:43.170]I mean one of them was Kathy Wilson, a great friend,
[00:15:45.720]but I was literally in her office twice a week
[00:15:49.170]talking about 311, 313.
[00:15:50.790]How are we gonna teach? What are we gonna do?
[00:15:52.350]How are you doing this?
[00:15:53.220]How are you doing this? All of that.
[00:15:55.050]It's like why am I sitting next to Kathy,
[00:15:58.530]the only person I know here?
[00:15:59.970]But it is our instinct to go to the place that is safe.
[00:16:02.580]And that's when I started having the strategy
[00:16:04.800]of just grabbing my chair and moving somewhere else
[00:16:07.320]and having a conversation, between courses kind of thing.
[00:16:10.863]It's a little bit more strategic than that.
[00:16:13.470]Because that would give me such social anxiety.
[00:16:16.440]But I would go to, like you said, index,
[00:16:20.070]who's doing work in the field in which I work
[00:16:23.850]and I would have some pointed conversations with them.
[00:16:27.030]So I'd have done a little bit of background knowledge.
[00:16:31.170]Like that's how met, oh wow,
[00:16:32.400]my friend Candance Doerr-Stevens,
[00:16:34.770]who's at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
[00:16:37.350]that's how we met as grad students.
[00:16:39.240]'Cause I knew she was doing work around multi-modality
[00:16:42.300]and, particularly, sound and that was fascinating to me.
[00:16:46.170]And so I would kind of stalk and be like, "Hey, what's up?"
[00:16:53.790]You know?
[00:16:55.024]But also at that same time, Karen Wolman,
[00:16:57.870]who was on my committee, was also very good.
[00:17:04.230]And this is something that as an Associate Professor
[00:17:07.140]I need to be thinking about,
[00:17:08.160]as my graduate students are going to conferences, as well.
[00:17:12.900]She was a delightful lever for introducing me to people.
[00:17:21.540]So like, oh, this is Jennifer Rozell.
[00:17:24.480]Oh, this is Cynthia Lu.
[00:17:25.920]Yeah.
[00:17:26.753]So people that were doing really important work
[00:17:31.170]and continue to do really important work in my field,
[00:17:34.440]I had introductions to them.
[00:17:35.910]They knew who I was.
[00:17:36.990]So when I ran into them at the airport,
[00:17:38.580]it would be like, "Hey, how is life?"
[00:17:40.560]Da da-da-da-da, right.
[00:17:45.034]So that function of conferences has changed as well?
[00:17:49.080]Yeah.
[00:17:50.460]But getting to know those people was super handy.
[00:17:53.940]But it was a bit more targeted,
[00:17:56.130]in terms of like my own introductions.
[00:17:58.530]Yeah, and I think that would be helpful.
[00:18:00.600]And I was just not that thoughtful and not that organized.
[00:18:06.840]I think there's a pattern there.
[00:18:08.670]I let things fall where they may.
[00:18:11.700]So tip of the hat,
[00:18:14.010]Sarah Vander Zanden taught me how to do that.
[00:18:16.500]She's at University of Northern Iowa
[00:18:18.240]and she was so thoughtful.
[00:18:22.080]Rooming with her for a conference
[00:18:24.690]and seeing how she organized her thinking
[00:18:27.390]around I'm gonna go see this person for this reason,
[00:18:29.880]this person for this reason.
[00:18:33.660]As a first year grad student kind of blew my mind.
[00:18:36.120]Yeah, and I think especially when I go with students,
[00:18:39.390]I do a few things.
[00:18:40.290]One is I help them plan.
[00:18:42.360]So I am planful from that perspective.
[00:18:44.790]Who is at this conference that you wanna meet?
[00:18:47.400]Who is this at this conference even you want to just hear?
[00:18:50.790]Because there are some names in our fields,
[00:18:53.310]especially when you are early, that are the biggest names
[00:18:56.670]and you want to hear them at least once in person.
[00:18:59.880]You want to hear what they're doing and thinking right now.
[00:19:02.190]Because if you're reading an article,
[00:19:04.560]they wrote it three, four years ago
[00:19:06.840]with data from maybe two more years.
[00:19:08.820]So you're reading about what they thought five years ago,
[00:19:11.700]maybe four years ago.
[00:19:13.110]Now they're doing and thinking about something else.
[00:19:15.480]And that's when you ask why go to conference,
[00:19:18.450]that's one of the reasons.
[00:19:19.550]Is is you're hearing about what people are doing right now,
[00:19:22.560]that they will publish in a few years
[00:19:24.480]unless they're actually working it backwards.
[00:19:26.790]Because for me,
[00:19:27.720]I'm looking for the newest thing when I go to a conference
[00:19:30.150]and this is also what I'm presenting.
[00:19:31.590]I'm presenting what I haven't published yet,
[00:19:34.080]not what I've already published.
[00:19:35.730]I know some people do it that way,
[00:19:37.350]because it's an opportunity to go.
[00:19:39.510]But for me, it's a future oriented because if I'm going
[00:19:44.430]and I'm presenting about what I'm doing right now.
[00:19:47.160]I'm getting free feedback.
[00:19:48.690]Not so free, because you're paying for the conference.
[00:19:50.610]But I'm getting feedback on the work.
[00:19:52.290]I'm getting ideas. I'm getting some citations.
[00:19:54.780]I'm getting some critique at a low,
[00:19:57.210]at least most of our conferences,
[00:19:59.070]do not have really people jumping at you
[00:20:01.980]or criticizing you in a negative way.
[00:20:04.650]Once in a while that happens,
[00:20:05.880]but most of the time it doesn't.
[00:20:07.620]And so it supports me in developing those manuscripts going.
[00:20:11.190]So that's a reason to go.
[00:20:12.810]And the the other thing in my metaphor
[00:20:16.290]is really making a pilgrimage.
[00:20:18.780]And that is one of the important things
[00:20:21.480]about making the pilgrimage is not being in the place
[00:20:25.500]as much as being on the way
[00:20:27.420]and creating that sense of being in a sacred space.
[00:20:35.550]And I wanna use this really carefully, but-
[00:20:38.730]I'm interested in where this is going.
[00:20:40.429]Yeah, yeah, but in that once you get up from your office
[00:20:46.440]and you go to Chicago, New Orleans, in my case,
[00:20:49.050]Washington D.C., now or wherever you are going,
[00:20:51.630]you are not in your office.
[00:20:53.340]Your students are far away.
[00:20:54.930]You can make the agreement with yourself
[00:20:56.610]to ignore your email for a few days
[00:20:58.830]or to take care of it early in the morning
[00:21:00.900]and then not do it, whatever.
[00:21:02.700]But you have space to have conversations
[00:21:07.440]and to listen in a way that, I think,
[00:21:09.960]in our daily academic lives we'd like to pretend
[00:21:12.930]that we sit at least an hour and a half a day
[00:21:14.610]and read professionally.
[00:21:16.920]But most of us don't.
[00:21:18.210]We just don't have enough time.
[00:21:19.890]And we definitely don't have enough time,
[00:21:21.750]I think, to have really deep conversations
[00:21:23.835]that are at the edge of where our research is.
[00:21:27.060]So I find that ability to say for three days,
[00:21:30.330]this is what I'm going to be doing, powerful.
[00:21:33.330]All the conferences that I've participated on online,
[00:21:36.090]and I've loved them because I didn't need
[00:21:37.440]to get out of my office and the cost is minimal,
[00:21:40.500]you're paying for the participation,
[00:21:42.270]but you're not traveling.
[00:21:43.440]You're not wasting time. You're not parking your car.
[00:21:45.720]All of that is fantastic.
[00:21:47.100]But I find that I go to three sessions, maybe.
[00:21:49.860]I go to my session, because I kinda have to,
[00:21:52.470]and then I go to two more sessions
[00:21:54.150]that I really, really want.
[00:21:55.770]And everything else I have great intents,
[00:21:57.720]but I never actually get to them
[00:21:59.340]because I'm still in my office.
[00:22:00.870]People knock on the door.
[00:22:02.370]I have tasks that I feel like, I'm at work.
[00:22:06.450]I should be doing all of this work
[00:22:08.310]and so it's not happening quite as effectively.
[00:22:11.010]I think that is why the face-to-face conference,
[00:22:15.300]even post pandemic, is surviving.
[00:22:17.670]Is that it provides that space
[00:22:20.400]and in my case also a delightful way,
[00:22:23.970]especially during social events,
[00:22:25.830]to find new emerging scholars
[00:22:29.160]and have productive conversations with them.
[00:22:31.680]That may end up, in my case,
[00:22:33.180]may end up with some collaboration.
[00:22:34.980]May end up with us never meeting again.
[00:22:37.020]But still that energy of young researcher-
[00:22:42.456]Whoa, whoa-whoa, we're getting into vampire-
[00:22:44.100]Is fantastic.
[00:22:45.750]Are you an energy vampire?
[00:22:48.750]Um, I, no. Yes.
[00:22:52.327]Okay, yes? No? Yes.
[00:22:53.933]A little bit.
[00:22:54.766]Okay.
[00:22:55.599]A little bit.
[00:22:56.432]It's important to come out. I enjoy that energy.
[00:22:59.172]As a vampire. Thank you.
[00:23:00.174]Thank you.
[00:23:01.007]I support you.
[00:23:01.990]I feel supported. I feel seen.
[00:23:03.420]Okay. Good.
[00:23:05.100]Good. It explains the black today.
[00:23:06.780]Yes.
[00:23:08.370]So- All right
[00:23:10.320]and the shade's going down.
[00:23:12.738]So I do wanna highlight one other kind of pro
[00:23:14.730]that was important as you were talking
[00:23:17.070]is when we're thinking about conferences,
[00:23:22.860]utilizing that space as a way to play with data,
[00:23:27.630]play with analysis, get some feedback on it
[00:23:30.990]and turning that then into a manuscript
[00:23:34.410]that you then send out for publication.
[00:23:36.510]Um-hmm, absolutely.
[00:23:39.150]One of the things that I do miss about conferences
[00:23:41.640]as we're thinking about these like conferences
[00:23:44.370]as kind of liminal spaces where we're neither here nor there
[00:23:49.080]is my conference group, we would always come together,
[00:23:55.080]find a coffee shop and we would work.
[00:23:58.140]Like we would, literally, write for about three hours
[00:24:01.560]with each other.
[00:24:03.090]And it's not so common
[00:24:06.840]now that we have that common time together.
[00:24:10.020]So we could be like, "Hey, when you are at a spot
[00:24:12.690]where you can stop, can I run this by you?
[00:24:14.550]This is what I'm trying to think through
[00:24:16.020]and work my way through."
[00:24:17.910]And so the ability to have that writing time together,
[00:24:21.570]that work time together,
[00:24:24.060]there's something really powerful about that.
[00:24:27.690]There's something really powerful about being in that space.
[00:24:35.220]So like when I went to the conference in Dublin
[00:24:38.340]this past summer, one of the things that was so powerful
[00:24:43.320]about being there was it pushed me through some stuff,
[00:24:48.150]some writing that I didn't have time to get to.
[00:24:51.660]That I didn't have the time
[00:24:52.800]and space and brain energy to get to.
[00:24:56.964]And so just pointing that out.
[00:24:58.800]And you speaking of Dublin
[00:25:01.710]reminded me that in the big conferences,
[00:25:04.140]not necessarily in the small one,
[00:25:05.790]or depending on for example,
[00:25:09.060]the Society for Comparative International Education,
[00:25:14.130]what we're talking about is also the opportunity
[00:25:17.610]to meet international scholars.
[00:25:19.740]And that presents with new opportunities
[00:25:22.860]to do some interesting research
[00:25:24.360]that is not so confined locally.
[00:25:26.310]I love my local context
[00:25:28.230]and I think it's really important
[00:25:29.550]to work in our local context first and foremost.
[00:25:32.160]But international collaborations opens up the idea
[00:25:35.970]that we can learn from other places
[00:25:39.780]and they can learn from us
[00:25:41.400]and we can have honest conversations about this.
[00:25:43.800]I'm laughing because that's one of my disappointments
[00:25:46.530]about that Dublin conference was that it was the first
[00:25:49.740]international conference post COVID lifting.
[00:25:52.890]Not that we're post COVID, COVID's still around.
[00:25:54.780]But you know what I mean.
[00:25:56.640]And it was a very American slate
[00:25:59.760]and so I got there and I looked at the program
[00:26:01.902]and was like, oh, that's not the function.
[00:26:05.640]It's not how this is supposed to function.
[00:26:07.410]This could be St. Louis.
[00:26:08.820]Oh, it could be St. Louis.
[00:26:10.500]It could be Columbus, Ohio.
[00:26:12.929]It could be anywhere
[00:26:13.762]and so that was a little bit of a drag.
[00:26:15.540]But sometimes it's a crapshoot.
[00:26:18.930]So what are your conferences?
[00:26:21.510]I don't know, actually.
[00:26:23.040]I'm in-
[00:26:24.270]What used to be your conferences?
[00:26:26.640]What used to be my conferences?
[00:26:30.030]So what used to be my conferences were LRA,
[00:26:35.520]so Literacy Research Association;
[00:26:37.680]and then also thinking about NCTE,
[00:26:42.780]so National Council of Teachers of English;
[00:26:46.860]IRA, International Reading Association;
[00:26:49.710]and then the Association of Literacy Educators
[00:26:52.350]and Researchers.
[00:26:53.670]So those were kind of my big conferences and-
[00:27:00.210]Did you alternate
[00:27:03.330]or did you go to all of them each year?
[00:27:05.040]I didn't go to all of them each year.
[00:27:06.690]Okay.
[00:27:07.523]I would go here and there.
[00:27:11.460]Kind of where I'm at in this,
[00:27:15.150]conferences, what are we to one another?
[00:27:17.370]Yeah.
[00:27:18.479]What is our role?
[00:27:21.102]Is really trying to think through where folks are grappling
[00:27:27.090]with the same questions I'm grappling with
[00:27:32.280]and it's tricky to figure out
[00:27:34.620]where those people are right now, right.
[00:27:37.110]Yeah.
[00:27:38.010]My research interests have shifted
[00:27:39.960]and changed and evolved.
[00:27:42.450]And that requires remapping, for sure.
[00:27:44.610]And that requires some remapping of the terrain, right.
[00:27:47.460]And I've actually found, there's a small private conference
[00:27:54.030]called Learning to Teach
[00:27:55.140]that gets convened every once in a while
[00:27:57.330]and that's actually been my favorite set of conferences ever
[00:28:04.050]'cause it's normally we go in,
[00:28:06.870]we dive into this is what teacher preparation
[00:28:10.320]looks like right now.
[00:28:14.520]And there's some time to present a little bit of work,
[00:28:18.030]but it's a lot of actual like collaborative work time
[00:28:23.490]and space around these ideas of teacher education.
[00:28:27.058]And that's how I always thought about
[00:28:27.891]the LRA morning groups.
[00:28:29.340]If you wake up early enough,
[00:28:30.690]I think they're 7:30 in the morning. (chuckles)
[00:28:32.790]Yeah, but imagine like four days of that.
[00:28:34.290]Yeah, that'll be fantastic, yes.
[00:28:36.660]So I get a little spoiled.
[00:28:39.540]I'm thinking about the Assembly of Research for NCTEAR
[00:28:44.010]as being another space that I think I wanna get back to,
[00:28:48.144]'cause that's really about
[00:28:51.540]getting into the work of the research
[00:28:56.130]and how we're talking about the research.
[00:28:58.500]And LRA, NCTE have kind of started
[00:29:03.570]to feel a little bit like high school.
[00:29:05.520]Hmm, yeah.
[00:29:07.020]Where like you've got your cliques
[00:29:09.780]and I'm not so much interested in that
[00:29:14.130]at this point in my career.
[00:29:16.950]I'm really interested in, okay, so what?
[00:29:21.060]Like the world is burning.
[00:29:22.680]To go back to you, like what's the cost of this plane ticket
[00:29:26.040]and the fuel?
[00:29:26.873]And like the world is burning.
[00:29:30.690]Public education is being dismantled.
[00:29:33.570]The roles and professionalization of teachers
[00:29:36.420]is constantly being called into question.
[00:29:39.810]What are we doing?
[00:29:40.643]What are we doing about it?
[00:29:43.282]And if we're not having actual conversations about that,
[00:29:46.197]I'm not particularly interested.
[00:29:49.230]Yeah, and-
[00:29:51.690]And that's why I'm single.
[00:29:53.765](both chuckling)
[00:29:58.140]All right. That was not the turn I was expecting,
[00:30:02.226]but okay.
[00:30:04.094]For me that has really transformed.
[00:30:05.580]I used to do LRA and AERA for many years. Those were my two.
[00:30:09.420]AERA was my big, you get ideas from somewhere else,
[00:30:12.570]you go and sample different ideas.
[00:30:17.111]And usually say, "Well, that's nice but not for me."
[00:30:20.850]But you get that and then LRA was my more like home.
[00:30:26.070]This is where I'm learning
[00:30:28.080]and I'm working with other people,
[00:30:30.420]that has really transformed.
[00:30:31.950]And right now the Society for Information Technology
[00:30:34.500]and Teacher Education is kind of my home.
[00:30:36.480]It's a very small, very friendly conference.
[00:30:40.260]You get to talk to a lot of people
[00:30:42.660]that are doing similar things
[00:30:44.070]or things that, at least, are adjacent.
[00:30:46.260]Great conversations about AI in the last year.
[00:30:50.010]And I love the fact
[00:30:51.030]that there were really balanced conversations,
[00:30:52.890]because the world is burning
[00:30:54.060]and AI may be actually pouring gasoline on top of this,
[00:30:57.900]conversation for another time.
[00:30:59.370]But it has some great potential-
[00:31:00.465]Great way to stress me out.
[00:31:01.530]Yeah, you're welcome. Way to go.
[00:31:02.800]Well, you're welcome.
[00:31:04.200]And so that's a way for me to think about this
[00:31:08.970]and then I sample.
[00:31:10.200]AACTE is the one I go to, probably most often,
[00:31:15.840]and that is because it is in the center of my work life
[00:31:21.270]as a teacher educator.
[00:31:22.860]I get great ideas and I have conversations
[00:31:26.130]about system change within teacher education
[00:31:29.400]that we're not really having in other places.
[00:31:31.680]And especially, the ability to innovate around diversifying
[00:31:35.310]the teacher workforce and those kind of things.
[00:31:37.290]That has been a lot of energy for me.
[00:31:39.180]I wonder if I just went on a bad year.
[00:31:41.359]'Cause my AACTE Conference experience has not been great.
[00:31:45.180]Yeah, and you've gotta be really selective
[00:31:48.060]in what you are doing there and who you're talking to.
[00:31:52.200]I've had different experiences in different years,
[00:31:55.050]but it's been really productive
[00:31:57.270]for a work-life kind of perspective.
[00:32:01.980]So let's go into the cost,
[00:32:05.910]especially, for graduate students.
[00:32:07.410]How do graduate students actually go,
[00:32:10.050]considering how much flights are now
[00:32:12.660]and hotels and all of that?
[00:32:16.380]So some of my strategies when I was a graduate student
[00:32:19.950]was what's nearby?
[00:32:22.470]Um-hmm, absolutely. What is close?
[00:32:24.660]What is within driving distance?
[00:32:26.220]Are there other folks that I could go with?
[00:32:29.160]Are there people I can share an Airbnb with?
[00:32:33.706]'Cause we didn't have funding available to us
[00:32:37.590]for conference travel.
[00:32:38.940]Some institutions do.
[00:32:40.680]Some have scholarships,
[00:32:41.760]some have grants that fund those conference experiences.
[00:32:47.160]But in graduate school, a lot of that was around,
[00:32:51.990]oh, what can I actually get to?
[00:32:54.240]Yeah.
[00:32:55.485]And will it be enough of a match
[00:32:59.100]and can I get other people to go with me
[00:33:00.630]to kind of split that cost, right?
[00:33:03.390]Yeah. There you go.
[00:33:05.430]How many times was my SUV filled with people
[00:33:07.500]driving to a conference,
[00:33:10.560]'cause we were all grad students
[00:33:11.580]and poor, right, like. Yeah.
[00:33:13.530]And so that's one way.
[00:33:15.210]The second thing is if you're a graduate student,
[00:33:19.380]especially or a young faculty member,
[00:33:22.380]remember that the hotel where everything is happening
[00:33:26.940]is probably going to be too expensive.
[00:33:28.950]There are always options that are a little bit farther away
[00:33:31.680]within walking distance or an Uber drive
[00:33:34.200]and it's completely worth it.
[00:33:35.310]If you have your own car,
[00:33:38.382]you know everybody getting into somebody's car
[00:33:40.050]and getting in, it gets even easier,
[00:33:41.940]because then it's easy.
[00:33:42.930]The only problem is in major cities
[00:33:44.940]parking for the day can be a real challenge.
[00:33:48.840]That's gotta be part of your plan.
[00:33:51.420]Always ask for funding. Always ask.
[00:33:54.210]You don't know what money is available.
[00:33:56.010]And if you don't ask, you're definitely not getting,
[00:33:58.620]right now at UNL you can ask from the graduate college
[00:34:02.820]from our own college and from the Department,
[00:34:05.280]nobody's giving you coverage for the whole thing.
[00:34:07.770]But everybody's giving you a little bit
[00:34:09.900]and you can cobble it together.
[00:34:11.700]If you have an advisor
[00:34:12.810]or you're working on a research grant,
[00:34:14.490]ask if it can cover it.
[00:34:16.350]And it's always, always, always better if you actually
[00:34:19.620]have a presentation on the conference.
[00:34:22.290]So always send, if you intend to maybe go,
[00:34:26.190]send a few proposals.
[00:34:28.080]Increase your odds of being of actually representing
[00:34:31.740]and then it's much easier to advocate for funds.
[00:34:34.950]Also, it gives you feedback.
[00:34:36.630]Again, going back to if you've done research
[00:34:39.240]this will give you feedback
[00:34:42.641]and some organizations have some limited,
[00:34:44.940]very limited travel funds that you can apply for.
[00:34:47.820]So check also the organization.
[00:34:50.280]It's never a lot, but it is a little bit
[00:34:54.090]and any little bit can help in that trying to cobble and go.
[00:34:58.290]Because I think especially as a young scholar,
[00:35:00.090]it is incredibly important to go and get to know people,
[00:35:02.700]network, listen to what's happening.
[00:35:04.950]And also understand,
[00:35:06.300]going back to my ongoing discussion about genre,
[00:35:09.270]understand the genre of what does it mean
[00:35:11.670]to do a conference presentation which is 12 minutes long
[00:35:14.370]with three minutes for questions and answer.
[00:35:16.380]That's very different then-
[00:35:17.457]And it's usually all lit review.
[00:35:20.160]Yes.
[00:35:20.993]Don't do that.
[00:35:22.064]Please don't do that.
[00:35:22.897]Please don't do that.
[00:35:23.967]Oh, my gosh.
[00:35:24.800]If you're spending more than one minute
[00:35:26.100]on your lit review, it's too much.
[00:35:29.130]We come to your session to hear what you have to say
[00:35:32.183]and innovate- Give them three.
[00:35:33.540]Okay.
[00:35:34.373]Be kind. Like what can you do in a minute?
[00:35:37.740]Say here's my lit review on the slide.
[00:35:41.250]You can read it in your spare time.
[00:35:43.090]In three minutes you can give them,
[00:35:44.540]here are the three big spots in my lit review.
[00:35:46.830]Here's a really quick sentence about each of them.
[00:35:48.900]Here's some citations.
[00:35:50.040]There's a Google Doc that gives you the whole citation
[00:35:52.020]if you want it later.
[00:35:53.400]But yeah, like also think through at a real nuts
[00:36:00.510]and bolts level, look at early bird registration,
[00:36:05.160]'cause oftentimes, early bird registration
[00:36:06.810]will be slightly less expensive.
[00:36:09.330]And students.
[00:36:10.530]Yes, so grad student levels, early bird registration.
[00:36:16.410]Sometimes early bird registration,
[00:36:21.690]from like a budget perspective,
[00:36:25.320]for me at times wasn't worth it
[00:36:27.630]to outlay the money-
[00:36:28.996]If it's $15 or $20, it's not enough of a difference.
[00:36:31.640]Right, if it's $100, then that's a bigger difference.
[00:36:36.600]Also thinking about the scale of the conferences,
[00:36:41.010]some of the smaller conferences are less expensive to go to
[00:36:45.720]and so one of the things I always enjoyed
[00:36:49.890]about the smaller conference,
[00:36:50.970]like NCTEAR the Assembly of Research,
[00:36:52.800]was you're forced to have face-time
[00:36:59.010]with some bigger scholars in the field
[00:37:02.610]because of how the nature of that is set up
[00:37:05.190]and there's more stuff included in that conference fee.
[00:37:09.840]So like, oh, you mean all my snacks
[00:37:12.960]are included here for the entire day?
[00:37:14.550]So I don't necessarily need to pay for lunch.
[00:37:16.410]Those kinds of things.
[00:37:17.280]So find those things out
[00:37:21.120]and leveraging those smaller conferences
[00:37:26.280]that are gonna be a little bit cheaper over the-
[00:37:28.950]Maybe more local.
[00:37:30.570]More local, more regional, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:37:34.650]I find that to be helpful
[00:37:38.130]as I'm thinking about how to afford it.
[00:37:41.640]Absolutely.
[00:37:42.473]All right, so we talked a lot about conferences.
[00:37:45.510]We want you to go,
[00:37:46.560]but also be really thoughtful about where you're going.
[00:37:49.080]My biggest question,
[00:37:50.370]and this is something I always grapple with,
[00:37:51.990]because I always get to that point in the conference
[00:37:55.320]where I feel like my brain is completely full
[00:37:58.440]and I don't know how to process anymore.
[00:38:02.190]What's your strategy to avoiding the burnout
[00:38:05.970]or dealing with it?
[00:38:07.470]Oh, so I have what my friends have called buffering phase.
[00:38:12.420]Um-hmm.
[00:38:13.320]Where I have my handy-dandy notebook
[00:38:17.070]and I'm not really processing, I am just recording.
[00:38:22.650]And I'm kind of color-coding a bit as I'm recording
[00:38:26.010]and on the way home or as I have a moment of downtime,
[00:38:32.700]I'll go through my notes and think through
[00:38:34.890]this is what I wanna come back to.
[00:38:36.810]So I engage in that like shifting,
[00:38:40.200]but I'm not as intellectually engaged,
[00:38:44.490]as I'm kind of trying to take everything in.
[00:38:46.950]It's not until after that I'm trying to figure out,
[00:38:50.316]okay, the so what?
[00:38:51.690]What is it about this experience,
[00:38:55.230]this conference, that was important to me.
[00:38:58.110]That I get to like sift through it
[00:38:59.817]and make some more sense of it,
[00:39:01.560]which has some pluses and negatives.
[00:39:05.430]Like it helps with my endurance,
[00:39:08.130]in terms of getting through the conference.
[00:39:10.170]Versus like day one you're bright and fresh
[00:39:13.830]and like day three you're like, can I go home now?
[00:39:17.190]Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:18.445]I can't do this anymore.
[00:39:19.290]So it allows me to, by day four,
[00:39:22.410]be like, okay, yeah, I got some stuff to think about.
[00:39:26.730]So endurance is great.
[00:39:28.350]And then it also gives me some stuff
[00:39:30.570]to reconnect with presenters around?
[00:39:34.613]Um-hmm.
[00:39:35.446]Like, oh, hey, I was thinking about this in the airport.
[00:39:38.490]Can you talk to me more about this?
[00:39:40.050]So it's this way to continue that networking piece,
[00:39:46.530]which is nice.
[00:39:47.363]But that's kind of my strategy and it seems to work for me.
[00:39:51.960]Yeah my strategy, as expected, is completely different-
[00:39:57.472]Everything, everywhere,
[00:39:58.563]all at once. And it's social.
[00:39:59.396]No, it is social.
[00:40:00.570]So I sit either with colleagues, usually the two
[00:40:04.350]and this is what I learned on
[00:40:06.625]my first conference at AERA in New Orleans.
[00:40:09.870]And that is we had a dinner,
[00:40:12.540]my mentor Bob Calfee had his students from all the years,
[00:40:19.440]whoever showed up at AERA there was a dinner with Bob
[00:40:23.190]and everybody else.
[00:40:24.420]Bob was paying.
[00:40:25.320]That was very good as a graduate student, right.
[00:40:28.557](Nicholas chuckles)
[00:40:29.700]But we got to meet and talk to others
[00:40:34.380]and talk about the conference
[00:40:35.580]and talk beyond the conference.
[00:40:36.660]And obviously, talk and tell Bob stories
[00:40:39.030]because that's required- Who doesn't love
[00:40:40.470]Bob stories?
[00:40:42.300]That is where it's at.
[00:40:43.680]That is where I learned that my experiences with Bob
[00:40:46.110]were not unique in any way, which was a relief,
[00:40:50.250]but a story for another time.
[00:40:52.950]Maybe when we talk about comprehensive exams
[00:40:55.170]or whatever you're calling them in different institutions,
[00:40:58.770]that will come up.
[00:40:59.730]But what I've learned, and this is what I do,
[00:41:02.490]I either sit with students
[00:41:04.860]or people who were my colleagues at one point or another
[00:41:07.380]and we know each other during lunch
[00:41:09.450]or in the early afternoon and just debrief together.
[00:41:13.350]What did you see that you thought,
[00:41:15.300]because through talking to somebody else,
[00:41:17.250]I start grasping with the idea
[00:41:19.320]of what did I actually see that I care about
[00:41:21.810]and that I'm going to roll with.
[00:41:24.630]And the advantage of that social aspect
[00:41:27.630]is you're hearing about what other people saw,
[00:41:29.850]which may be very different,
[00:41:31.110]which may actually be something you want to follow up on.
[00:41:34.350]And if I have graduate students coming with me,
[00:41:37.020]which I try to have as much as possible,
[00:41:39.360]that's an opportunity because you're doing both things.
[00:41:41.580]You're learning about what they've heard.
[00:41:44.580]You're processing yourself,
[00:41:45.930]but you're also teaching them how to process.
[00:41:48.450]Which is, I think, an important thing
[00:41:50.490]because you can go to a conference
[00:41:51.930]and come back and not remember anything
[00:41:54.000]if you're not intentional about it, right.
[00:41:55.920]And then going back to is it worth it?
[00:41:58.440]It's not worth it at that point.
[00:41:59.940]Yeah, not if you're not able to
[00:42:01.080]synthesize any of that, right?
[00:42:02.580]Yeah.
[00:42:03.413]And one of the things that I noticed in Dublin
[00:42:06.870]that was happening is as people
[00:42:09.330]are leveraging digital tools,
[00:42:11.700]my organization had to change a bit, right?
[00:42:15.701]Yeah.
[00:42:16.534]So like one of the things
[00:42:18.150]that I found myself doing there
[00:42:19.500]is I relied less on my notebook and more on my Google Drive.
[00:42:22.860]Like I would add,
[00:42:24.030]people would- Sure.
[00:42:25.590]Make their presentations available.
[00:42:27.360]I'd add them to my Google Drive.
[00:42:29.160]I'd have notes going alongside of that.
[00:42:31.841]So that was really interesting.
[00:42:33.900]It was a different way to be engaged in that conference
[00:42:39.570]that I hadn't expected.
[00:42:43.230]Yeah, and I think about the other benefit
[00:42:46.350]that we've talked about and I want to just kind of,
[00:42:49.050]why is it important to go to conferences?
[00:42:52.020]I think that part of the publishing process,
[00:42:54.270]it is really the critical element for me.
[00:42:57.900]It pushes you to write and get something out there.
[00:43:00.630]It gives you feedback on that something, whatever it may be.
[00:43:04.350]It's an opportunity to go to sessions with editors
[00:43:08.070]who talk about how to get published.
[00:43:10.050]What are the most common mistakes.
[00:43:11.670]What are the things that you should avoid and all of that.
[00:43:13.980]There's always a session.
[00:43:15.990]Go to them, especially as a young scholar,
[00:43:18.180]you learn every time you listen,
[00:43:20.490]something new, something different
[00:43:22.650]and you also can have a conversation with an editor.
[00:43:25.410]And I've seen a few editors,
[00:43:26.670]especially in the big conferences,
[00:43:27.990]actually walking through a poster session,
[00:43:30.810]giving their cards and saying, "I like this.
[00:43:34.050]When you finish the paper, I want you to submit it."
[00:43:36.120]So you are getting a hook into the publication process
[00:43:40.830]that can be highly supportive.
[00:43:42.270]Ooh, and a callback.
[00:43:43.967]Yeah.
[00:43:44.850]Additionally, as you are establishing that network,
[00:43:50.730]you're also thinking about within your tenure process,
[00:43:54.600]if you're in a tenure track position,
[00:43:57.120]people who can provide commentary
[00:43:59.190]on your contributions to the field.
[00:44:01.710]Yeah, that's very true.
[00:44:02.994]So one of the pieces that you'll have to do
[00:44:05.490]as you move from assistant to associate
[00:44:08.610]is provide a list of people who are able to talk to
[00:44:12.690]and about your larger contributions.
[00:44:14.880]And a lot of the people that I supplied in my listings
[00:44:19.320]were from people I met at conferences.
[00:44:21.030]See! All the way back, look at me work!
[00:44:23.940]All the way back,
[00:44:25.151]to networking. Coffee, finally kicked in.
[00:44:27.660]Okay.
[00:44:29.103]To Assistant Associate.
[00:44:29.936]Yes.
[00:44:30.769]Yeah, see?
[00:44:31.602]Now it looks like I planted that.
[00:44:34.080]Edit this so it makes it look like I did that.
[00:44:36.810]Make it look like I'm smart
[00:44:38.610]and caffeinated when neither of those things were true
[00:44:42.600]at that point in time.
[00:44:44.760]Can that happen?
[00:44:46.290]I don't know, please?
[00:44:47.123]No, I'm getting a head shake, no.
[00:44:49.290]No?
[00:44:50.160]It's okay.
[00:44:50.993]I'm fine with it. Whatever.
[00:44:53.580]Life on YouTube.
[00:44:56.190]All right, so. So conferences.
[00:44:59.670]Conferences are fun,
[00:45:00.900]but you have to be thoughtful about them.
[00:45:02.520]Um-hmm, yeah, you have to be thoughtful
[00:45:07.980]and sometimes a vacation's okay.
[00:45:11.250]Yes.
[00:45:12.083]Like COVID has been really helpful in getting,
[00:45:18.630]for me, to think about where are the organizations
[00:45:24.480]doing the work that I'm most interested in.
[00:45:28.230]And if those organizations don't exist,
[00:45:32.670]where do I find those conferences?
[00:45:35.670]Those opportunities?
[00:45:36.707]Where do I find, where do I find,
[00:45:37.560]where do I find my people?
[00:45:40.350]Versus you, you are just all over the place.
[00:45:43.170]I am a little bit,
[00:45:44.190]I'm always looking
[00:45:45.720]and I think that's where I am in my career
[00:45:49.080]and in my family life.
[00:45:50.520]I mean we didn't mention the fact if you've got young kids,
[00:45:54.510]some conferences will give support.
[00:45:56.430]Travel is still expensive.
[00:45:58.200]Right.
[00:45:59.033]That made it that for a long time,
[00:46:00.990]I was the king of the 48 hours at a conference,
[00:46:04.050]including travel time.
[00:46:05.610]That was special and now I take a little bit longer
[00:46:09.930]and I'm enjoying it a lot more,
[00:46:12.450]because in 48 hours you present twice
[00:46:15.060]and then you interface with people once,
[00:46:20.100]you have one lunch and you go to two presentations,
[00:46:22.980]that's all you have.
[00:46:24.180]I'm trying to figure out
[00:46:25.013]something clever around promiscuous and conference going
[00:46:28.410]and I'm not having any luck.
[00:46:31.770]Maybe next time.
[00:46:32.640]Maybe next time. Maybe next time.
[00:46:37.770]So it feels like
[00:46:38.670]we've covered some basics around conferences.
[00:46:41.880]Which is good. Be thoughtful.
[00:46:44.010]Ask for funding if it's there.
[00:46:47.760]Think about scale and, ultimately, make it useful.
[00:46:55.800]You should be able to pull that back into your work.
[00:46:58.590]So, yeah.
[00:47:01.380]What are we talking about next? Do you have any idea?
[00:47:03.817]I have no idea.
[00:47:04.650]So if you have suggestions.
[00:47:06.270]Well, don't look at me. Look at them.
[00:47:07.860]If you have suggestions.
[00:47:10.320]Comment down below.
[00:47:11.970]And I believe the young ones are saying, "Smash".
[00:47:16.650]Smash?
[00:47:17.520]Smash, that Like button. Okay, oh.
[00:47:20.503]I don't know and Subscribe.
[00:47:23.460]Like we're a magazine.
[00:47:27.900]I don't know what's gonna work.
[00:47:28.770]But yes, if you have ideas,
[00:47:30.540]if you have things you want us to tackle,
[00:47:32.970]either in this season of "Not That Kind of a Doctor"
[00:47:35.910]or our next season, let us know,
[00:47:39.030]'cause we're always working on ideas.
[00:47:42.060]And we're not that kind of doctor.
[00:47:44.010]We're not that kind of doctor.
[00:47:46.020]Obviously (mumbling), I don't know.
[00:47:48.900]So, all right, see you in the next one.
[00:47:51.821](upbeat music)

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Not That Kind of Doctor - Conferences

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