Back from the long conference

Ok, so the longest conference of the year is over, and I am finally home. Some highlights:

• Please don't look at my writing counters: nothing to see there. Between the sessions, catching up with people, and helping out with the things I signed up for, there was no time to collect my thoughts or get a whole lot of sleep.
• My talk went well. I think. I got some good questions, and some positive feedback from the friendly faces in the audience, but other than that I am a bad judge of how it went. How do you evaluate how your talk went?
• I finally got to meet a bloggy friend Rebecca and her husband, which was a lot of fun. I already suspected we'd get along great, and I was right :) It was terrific to get to know them in real life, and I am glad that we should have plenty of opportunities to see each other in the future!
• I am trying to evaluate an appropriate level of involvement in the conference for the up-coming years. I definitely want to attend, and being involved in organizing the conference has given me more opportunities to meet and get to know some of the most involved people in the field. But, as (still) a student, my choices are somewhat limited, and I should probably be mindful of getting too distracted from what should be my main goal in the near future: graduating! How do you decide how involved you should be with something?
  
• One of the guys I was working for at this conference last year is expecting a baby any day now and thus was not present at the conference; I overheard some snarky comments about him choosing not to attend. (WTF?)
• I was sad to learn that one of the scientist couples I know are splitting up because they are constantly having to make choices between which is going to advance in their careers. When I think about my 2-body problem, I don't really get past the "getting co-located jobs after graduation" part and till now have forgotten that people like to continue moving up after they get that first job. This was a sad warning as I was told it is quite common for career advancement stress to impact relationships in this way.
  
• This particular conference is a big trade show in my field, and one can judge the state of the economy by it pretty well. Sadly, unlike the previous years, I saw very few people looking to hire someone this year. The only good thing about that was that I didn't have to explain too many times why I will not be graduating yet this summer. Those that will be graduating will sure have a tough time finding a job!
  
• There were fewer booth bunnies this year (again, a sign of a bad economy). If you are not familiar with the concept of a booth bunny, lets just say that in predominantly male fields, companies like to staff their booths with eye candy to attract customers (argh!). An unfortunate corollary: if you are try to be Dr.Isis-hot, you will be confused with a booth bunny. It is a fine line to walk: dress well enough to make a good impression on potential employers, but at all cost avoid looking like a booth bunny.
  

The uber-fun to-do list for today: run, put together weekly meal plan, fetch groceries, cook up a storm, do laundry, put away travel stuff, don't look at work to-do list to avoid panic.