Tips For Students Who Want To Go To Conferences...
1. Join the organization- the student membership is always cheaper than regular membership and there's always a reduced conference rate for members. Plus, as a member you'll get all the emails about extra networking events going on, tip-offs for where to find the free food (more on that later), access to student groups (who sometimes band together to share hotel costs), and all the cool periodicals that the organization puts out for a whole year.
2. Register early! Get the early-bird discount- often on top of an already-reduced student rate!
3. Buy your plane ticket early and start racking up frequent flyer miles.
4. Stay at Youth Hostels. If you're willing to stay in a group dorm, you'll often pay less than $30/night. Just for a frame of reference, for the ASA conference the hotels were $200/night (and that includes the reduced rate for conference attendees). Instead of that, I stayed in a women's dorm at a youth hostel for $125 for the whole trip! Plus I got to meet a lovely group of Australian students and explore the city a little more than I would have if I'd just holed up at the conference hotel.
5. Use Google Maps to plot your travel, public transit routes, and walking distances. Print street maps ahead of time. Call all relevant locations in advance and ask them which subway stop is closest. Use Google's street view to 'walk' the neighborhoods in advance and get used to all the landmarks.
6. Before the trip, go to the conference homepage online and start perusing the available workshops. Often, there are TONS of workshops and it takes a fair amount of time to whittle them down to the ones that are actually interesting and relevant to you. Just going through them once in advance and printing a list of the highlights will make a difference once you get there- you'll feel more focused and confident that you aren't missing the best workshops just because you're disorganized. Don't whittle them down too much, though- keep a few options for each time slot. often you can scurry between 2+ concurrent sessions if the rooms are close to each other, and sometimes there are last minute cancellations or your mood changes and you decide x looks better than y after all. Once you get there, look in the back of the conference guide for listings by presenters. Sometimes there are nationally known presenters giving poorly publicized talks that you'll be sad to realize you've missed just because the title didn't initially pop out at you.
Lastly, note which time slots that are 'duds'-- these will become your mealtimes!
7. Which reminds me- scout out the free food! It's there to be had, often at networking events that might otherwise be scary. Know that others are nervous about networking, too, but at the very least you can chat about the lovely appetizers... and make an early exit if you still feel uncomfortable. Also food-related: hostels have kitchens, so if you stay at one won't be at the mercy of fast food, restaurants and expensive room service for the whole trip. You can hit a grocery store and label your food, leave it in the kitchen, and cook whenever you want. Hostels also tend to serve morning breakfast (bagels, cereal) for about $2.
8. Leave extra room in your luggage! Even if you try not to, you will likely accumulate tons of papers, sample journals, books (often on discount the last day), etc. I have discovered that I need the equivalent space of a whole extra backpack to get it all back home.
9. Pay early: I tend to make all my reservations and pay for as much as possible in the week or two after I get my student loan refund each semester. That way it's done, the money is spent, and the only thing that remains is the excitement for the adventure!
10. Tell your teachers and supervisors what you are doing and ask for necessary reprieves from deadlines, days off, and other scheduling considerations (e.g., if you have to give a class presentation at some point) well in advance. Everyone has been very supportive and encouraging and I've had no problems whatsoever. If relevant, you might even offer to present to fellow students/interns about what you learned while away.
11. Do extra homework the week or two beforehand. Even with the best intentions, it will be hard to get any done at the conference.
Let me know if these tips helped you on any of your travels, and happy learning!
kate.
This is NOT from the conference, but this is a good representation of what her talk was like. And man, she is funny!
kate.
Maya Angelou - Being Ageless
I spent most of last week at the American Society on Aging's Annual Conference, just got back today!
I got to go to some great workshops, including an especially good one from the Zen Hospice Project about Buddhist mindfulness and hospice care. If you are at all interested in such things, they are a great organization based in San Francisco.
Also saw a nice keynote address by Maya Angelou and a final night party with the Capitol Steps, a political musical comedy troupe. Check out their website, they have some funny mp3s that you can download.
I also indulged myself by spending an extra night and going to the Cherry Blossom Festival on the National Mall. It was beautiful! 
(I didn't take this picture- I forgot my camera and couldn't take ANY- ugh!)
kate.
First, 'for business', I went to a five-day conference in San Francisco sponsored by the Gerontological Society of America, one of the big organizations for people in the field of aging (which is huge and multidisciplinary, from public policy to primary care to psychology to epidemiology... and thensome). One of my MSPP professors suggested I attend and it was a great, overwhelming and very educational experience. Got to meet some interesting people and take lots of great workshops.
Now I'm in Vancouver, Canada, and have begun the 'for pleasure' portion of my trip. That said, I have discovered that I can never really escape the demands of grad school. Although I had intended to get everything done before getting on the airplane, it just didn't happen. Also, at the last minute I realized I had some extra work to do for my Rorschach class. So, my luggage got rearranged, and the Rorschach books, a folder of field placement materials, and readings for my Humanistic class all got packed. I guess it is "Reading Week" for me after all!
Moral of the story? Once you start grad school, you are in it, 24/7. It's a big commitment and you had better love being a student, love reading about psychology, love thinking it and writing it and living it. Because it sort of takes over your life, and even on vacation, has a way of worming its way into your luggage...
Happy Thanksgiving!
kate.
- Location:West Coast
- Mood:
amused - Music:Bob Dylan
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- MA School of Professional Psychology