Back and Busy: conference fun

I haven't blogged for a very long time. I said I'll go for a two-week vacation, and I planned to resume posting as soon as I come back, but I never thought that the new semester I was about to start this spring will be one of the busiest ever. A lot of things have been going on for the last three months (wow! I can hardly believe that three whole months have past!). I'm now working in the lab most of the time. No more classwork. So It's just me and my experiments. My research is not done yet, but I thought that it would be best to start writing my thesis while I'm still working. So I wrote the introduction, and started writing my materials and methods, then I'll start putting the results I have so far together. This way I can save some time.

This semester started with two consecutive conferences held in our college. One was a Toxicology and Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) one, while the second was a broader spectrum conference, and it included any pharmacy related subject: pharmacology, pharmaceutics, industrial pharmacy, clinical pharmacy, toxicology, pharmaceutical chemistry, etc etc...

Both were very interesting to me. Especially that I'm feeling like I'm gradually drifting away from my "original" profession, as I'm turning to be a scientist more than a pharmacist. Which is not a bad thing, and a lot of pharmacists work in research and academia too, but I still want to keep up with what's happening in pharmacy in general, especially the clinical aspect of it.

The first conference (the TDM one) passed by quietly and with not much fuss, and included only formal lectures and a workshop. The second one was more fun; it was more like a carnival. Maybe the fact that the latter covers the interests of more people is the reason, or maybe because it's only the second one of its kind held in our Little College. But what I'm really sure of is that the organizing committee have done a great job.

The conference included formal lectures, speeches, short oral presentations, poster sessions, and a workshop. The invited speakers were all well-known scientists in their fields, and several of them are authors/contributors/editors of textbooks we used in pharmacy school, whom I personally was very excited to meet. I also happened to meet several old buddies from undergrad whom I haven't seen for over a year, so it was like a "scientific reunion for us. The lunch breaks were also kind of scientific; I never imagined I would sit someday with professors at the same lunch table, eating, joking, and talking about science too.

From every lecture I attended, I had to come out with something new. I even watched the lecturers carefully to see how they gave their talks and presented their material. I noticed how the dealt with questions and some embarrassing situations. I learned that even the best professors make mistakes or say, "I don't know", when they didn't. I saw that some of the most knowledgeable scientists can be not-so-good presenters, and their slides can be the most crowded and un-readable ever. I took note of these presentations and slides too, so that I can learn from other people's mistakes and to make sure that I don't do these mistakes in my own talks and presentations.

The only sad thing was that I wasn't able to attend all the events because I didn't want to interrupt my lab work. Two weeks of conferences were a lot for me, and I thought to myself that once I graduate, I'll hopefully be able to attend as much of those as I like. I went only to the events that I felt would be most interesting, and that I could attend without interrupting my experimental plans (e.g. during incubation times). But still, a tech in the next lab told me that even the ones I missed out were amazing. Oh well, you can't get everything in life you know. And to get something, you'll need to sacrifice a lot of other things for it.

I was impressed with the number of undergrad students who attended. I know that not all of them really wanted to be there and they were just pressed to go by their professors or geeky friends, but just them being there and seeing what was going on was a good thing. I think that there they got to learn the connection between academia, science, and pharmacy. They can have a closer look at what professors actually do other than just teaching them (See FSP's post). They can also learn that professors and scientists are not necessarily dull, boring, or freaky people; in fact, they can even be witty, outgoing, and fun, let aside motivating and inspiring. Science itself is not boring; it's exciting. Some of them might have found a field that caught their attention, and they might start considering grad studies and becoming professors themselves one day.