Presenting at a Conference for the First Time, As Luck Would Have It - By Jessica Bates

Last spring, I was a very lucky graduate student.

I was lucky to have spent the previous summer in the field for the first time. I was also lucky to have an advisor who encouraged my research partner and I to put together a paper on our data for the Society for Applied Anthropology’s annual meeting. I was luckier still that our graduate student association (AGSA) awarded me a generous travel grant that would help defray my costs to travel there.

However, the unlucky part of all this was that the SfAAs actually accepted our paper.

Up until the point of receiving the acceptance e-mail, I had happily gone through the process of creating a paper on my field experience. I had happily daydreamed about attending the SfAA meeting and networking with all those big-wig famous anthropologists and activists. I reveled in the idea of spending part of my spring break (believe it or not) in listening to other presentations and learning more about the field I was happy to be in.

But after the acceptance, everything changed.

This was to be my first visit to a professional meeting in which I would also be presenting. I had been to the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting once before, and this would be my first visit to the SfAA meeting. I enjoyed the AAAs immensely and was looking forward to the SfAAs...but now the ante had been, well, upped.

If you’ve never presented before at a professional meeting, you probably know where I’m going with this.

Suddenly all I could think about was whether or not I would humiliate myself. How could I possibly - me, a beginning master’s student with barely any experience! - present a paper in front of experts in my field? How could I withstand their brutal questioning, their stinging criticisms, their skeptical looks as I stood at that podium? Would my hands shake? Would my voice make that awful warbling sound that only happens in front of large audiences? Would I remember to match my shoes that morning? Worst of all - could our paper possibly be good enough?

Someone should have told me to just relax.

Well actually, many people did. Our professors, our advisor, and fellow students helped us prepare. We were told to read our papers aloud to ourselves at least ten times, to not sweat the small stuff, and to try to enjoy Mérida, Mexico, where the meetings were being held.

We should have listened.

Our presentation went alright. It wasn’t terrible, and there were things we learned how to do better in the future. Once the paper part was over (towards the beginning, lucky for us), we started enjoying the other things we had come for.

There were presentations that were immensely better than ours. But there were also presentations that were worse than ours. There were people I assumed to be seasoned veterans, and people who I thought must just be starting out like me. We made wonderful contacts not only with professors and non-academic participants, but with other students as well.

In the end, I was very luck last spring. Not only did I have a great support system of people in my academic circle, but I also survived the experience of giving my first presentation at a professional conference. And I’d like to think I survived the ordeal quite well in the end.

I now know that at least the SfAA meetings are not as intimidating as I made them out to be. Not only was our session sparsely attended (lucky for us again), but the people in attendance were kind, supportive, and interested in our topic. Watching other presentations made us realize we were sort of in the middle of the spectrum as far as quality went. Afterwards, I was incredibly motivated to submit other papers in the future, and I would whole-heartedly encourage other first-timers to submit as well.

I’ve already sent in my paper for the SfAA meeting in 2011.

We’ll see how I feel in December if I receive an acceptance e-mail.