Last week I had the privilege of attending the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) Congress in Ottawa, ON. The CAP Congress is essentially a week long conference full of seminars, posters, information booths, workshops, panels, lectures and all sorts of networking from physicists in both academia and private industry. It’s the third conference I have attended as an undergraduate, but there was something a little bit different about this particular one.

The previous two conferences were a lot smaller, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. I met a lot of great people and made some new friends at those, some of who I saw at CAP last week. I also attended a lot of good talks at those conferences. But perhaps I was still getting used to the idea of even being at a conference for those first two. I presented a poster at the first one and gave a talk at the second one, so I was preoccupied by my nerves for a lot of it, and the environment of a conference was so new to me, it was a lot to take in. I think perhaps this made it difficult to relax enough into the experience to get the most out of it.

I did not have to present anything at this conference, so the only thing I needed to focus on was which sessions I wanted to attend. I was like a kid in a candy store. Did I want to learn about new detector techniques for dark matter? How about particle accelerators where they smash stuff together to look for smaller stuff? The world was my oyster.

The really neat thing is the more I was able to relax into the experience, the more I was able to simply enjoy the physics and the learning. I even briefly forgot I was in a room full of complete strangers. Suddenly I found myself raising my hand in sessions and asking questions! This was a big step for me. While I can ask questions in class no problem, I had always struggled to in public seminars, conferences, etc. I had a fear of looking silly by asking a “stupid” question (I know, I know, there’s no such thing – but very often I am one of the only undergrads in the room, everyone else usually has much more experience and education than myself). In fact, I used to send my questions to one of my mentors and friends to ask for me. He was in the room when I started asking, and I think he was just as surprised as I was by it!

I would say that this was my first conference experience in which I came back somewhat inspired. And even my drive to complete my program has been renewed (not that I was questioning whether I would finish it, but I certainly was feeling the fatigue of it). I managed to map out the rest of my program and set a date for when I would (hopefully) be elegible for graduation – December 2028, here I come! I also came away from the conference with many cool ideas of how to make my own upcoming talks a bit better. Now I’m in a funny place in which I am excited about making a talk, but not so much about giving it… But hey, progress is progress.

But I think maybe the coolest thing to come out of that conference with was the fact that I was able to look up at the people giving the talks and for the first time in my life imagine myself as one of them. It’s a very real possibility that this conference was able to actually let me gain some headway against my imposter syndrome and picture myself not only doing this for the rest of my life, but doing it successfully. I was even able to talk with some educators in the field and get reassurances about my prospects and abilities for graduate studies. I definitely spent the week feeling like I belonged there, which was a strange feeling to adjust to. That feeling alone almost made me nervous since the universe has historically pulled the rug from under me whenever I have felt that in the past. But this time I am steering the ship, not the universe. Time to let go of that anxiety and firmly step into this role of who I am meant to be.

I will say though not everything was roses and parades for me. Conferences are definitely an overwhelming experience for a neurodivergent person (possibly for a neurotypical one, too, but as I am not one, I would not know). They are loud, crowded, you’re in an unfamiliar place, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, and you don’t have control over what and when you eat… It’s chaos, and I definitely felt the toll of it every evening. But I was lucky to have someone who is close to me there with me. They helped with things like making sure I ate dinner when I was too brain fried to do that on my own. We carpooled so I didn’t need to worry about driving and parking. I certainly would have struggled much more on my own than with someone I know and trust there with me.

And I learned that conference poster sessions are far too loud and chaotic for me. If you have never been to one, the posters are all hung on boards rather close together, forming rows that all the people will wander through, going to posters at random. Then the poster presenter will either launch into a very quick spiel outlining their research, or will let you read the poster and answer any questions you have. Basically the entire conference is squished together into a very tight space and they are all trying to have conversations at the same time.

Out of fear of missing out and believing I need to attend everything I possibly could, I did subject myself to that chaos. In the future, I now know that I should not, and that it’s okay to miss one particular aspect of a conference, especially if it means accommodating myself to allow myself to fully enjoy and participate in the rest.

So… this was a long and rambling post, I’m aware of that. But to summarize, I am very glad I went. I am where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to do, and I have found an amazing network of people who will support me and cheer me on as I do it. I just have to recover from the conference first haha!