To conference or not to conference?

Like most academics, I get a lot of invitations to random conferences. They are usually pretty scammy, like Greetings, Fellow Doctor! We read your recent article with great interest and wish to invite you to talk on a subject of your choosing at our coming conference in Barcelona Spain, in August 2019. Please reply immediately if you wish to seize this remarkable and unforgettable opportunity!

Ron Swanson disapproves of spending
taxpayer dollars on conferences

To be fair, legit conferences do this too, with reminders about registration and abstract submission deadlines. I flag the ones I’m interested in, and ignore the rest.

So when I got email reminders about an upcoming well-known conference in my field, I didn’t think much of it.

Then about a month ago, I got an email about CME (continuing med ed) disclosures. Huh, I thought, and moved on with my life.

Then, this morning, I got a link to upload presentation files. Hey, wait a minute!

So I logged in to the conference website, and there I am! Listed as a speaker! On a panel talking about a topic I actually know a lot about!

I’m not giving a keynote (I think????)
but the sentiment is the same

So then I really freaked out. Started combing through my emails to see if I had missed an invitation or worse, had responded to an invitation without realizing it. I know one of the other panelists so contacted them asking if they had nominated me (without checking? that would be weird?) or if they were blindsided too. Found a hotel room on Booking.com (free cancellation!) and started looking at flights.

But it still all feels really weird. I was not planning to go, before I got this email today. It’s a very well-regarded conference in my field, and an invited talk, even on a panel, would be fantastic for my CV. But the location’s kind of a pain to get to, and it’s coming in the middle of a very busy season — I’ll have just gotten back from one overseas conference, then I have two (local) talks scheduled, then am prepping for another conference just after this one.

What do you think, Gentle Readers?

Radiographic Anatomy

Here’s what I did in lecture today: an artistic representation of a transverse section of the heart screaming, “Help, I’m trapped in the mediastinum!”

Radiology is not hard per se — all you do is look at films all day — but they are kind of throwing us into things without any real context. When Dr. R. pointed to haze and said “This is clearly the aortic arch,” we all sort of giggled nervously. Even histo’s clearer than this.

Other than difficulty with the chest X-rays and CT scans, life and classes are going well. I just got back from a weekend in the Catskills, chaperoning low-income city kids for an enrichment program run out of the children’s hospital here. They learned team-building and I re-learned how much I enjoy working with kids and helping them understand the world around them. Around the campfire, I told them all about the stars — they’d never seen stars before — and Cassopeia and Orion and slaves running north with only the Big Dipper to guide them. They were fascinated, and I got an incredible rush from telling them something new and exciting. I think I’m going to get more involved with the program as the school year goes on.