Conferences

In the next six months, I am attending 5 conferences and presenting 6 papers. This is one of my least favorite aspects to being an academic. While I enjoy attending conferences and talking about my work in an informal setting, I find academic presentations scary. I am not good at captivating an audience, or working without a script (in my discipline, reading from a paper is a no-no--I circumvent this by memorizing my talks). Answering questions on my research is also intimidating.

My next presentation is at the end of March, and unfortunately, submission to this conference required only an abstract. I am now a week away from needing to send a paper to my discussant, and I am still at the abstract phase. I think I will be able to put together a decent paper, but I hope they do not publish our submission abstracts in the program. I cannot deliver on the promises of those lofty goals.