Attending and Presenting at a Conference

When I started my Master's thesis, I expected to present it at the defense, maybe in a job interview, but never thought I would do it in a room full of experienced researchers at a conference in Norway.

After I finished my thesis, my supervisor invited me and my study buddy Alice to join a workshop conference organized by the Nordic Network for Simulation-based Training and Professional Learning (SimPro). At first, we simply thought, "Oh, fun — it's a great reason to meet up again after graduation," so we decided to go.

One of the project members working on the same project we interned with was about to present a paper based on Alice's and my internship work. The original plan was for her to present, but I bluntly asked if I could try as well. It felt like a fantastic opportunity. I still felt safe because I wouldn't need to do it alone, and I knew if something went wrong, there would be an experienced researcher next to me who could (and would) save me.

What I didn't expect was to present my Master's thesis alone this time. BUT another speaker wasn't able to attend, so my supervisor asked me pretty spontaneously if I wanted to step in. Completely scared and nervous, I said, "Sure, why not - seems like a great opportunity".

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Let's dive into how this conference worked and what we got to experience:

We hit it off over a fantastic lunch at the hotel we were staying at, followed by a workshop on video data analysis for a simulation-based training project for nurses. While it felt really intimidating to see what these researchers were able to analyze, it was so interesting to see how they look at data, what they discuss, and how they formulate their observations. Following, we heard two more presentations on different projects before I got to present our internship paper together with Susan, the post-doc working on the project.

Of course, I can't forget we had Fika in between, because it wouldn't be a Nordic conference without a scheduled Fika time :)

After the presentations, our brains were on fire, and we were extremely exhausted. So we checked into our hotel room (paid for by the conference organizers—how cool is that) and went for a nice little walk around the hotel.

At dinner, we sat with all the PhD students and postdocs, talking about their projects, home countries, and nerded out on how to define feedback or design learning analytics dashboards. (If you know me, I felt so electric because nothing excites me more than nerding out about such things :))

The next day, we had a great breakfast and drove to the University of Southern Norway's campus for a tour of the maritime simulators. We even got to drive our own cruise ship in the simulator. If you ask yourself if we know how to do that, of course not, haha. But we managed to stay safe and didn't crash!

After another Fika, it was time for my Thesis presentation, which went great according to Alice, and since people asked some interesting questions, it seemed like a success. I was very very very nervous, but it was such a great experience and an opportunity I might not get again. If you are ever in a situation like that, I would advise you to take the chance because it was a really great experience!

We listened to two more presentations on maritime rescue missions and learning analytics dashboards before our last lunch together.

At this point, I want to mention that EVERYONE at this conference was extremely nice!

They asked us what we are doing, showed interest in our thesis, invited us to ask questions, even suggested we visit their universities, and forwarded us other events that could be of interest to us. The PhDs and Post Docs told us we could reach out anytime with questions about navigating academia and wished us all the best.

So while yes, it was intimidating to be there, it was also lovely because everyone made us feel welcome, even though we were by far the most inexperienced people at that conference.

I also want to mention that I feel fortunate to have gotten the opportunity, because that was truly special.

Hope that helps to shine a light on what attending and presenting at a conference could look like as a Master Student/recent graduate

Best,

Sonja