Greeeeeaaaaaat

Nicole called me this morning to tell me that the details about the conference in Boston had been e-mailed to us. This conference isn't what I'm used to, which is being on a panel with 3 or 4 other people, reading my paper to whoever shows up, and then participating in a 15-20 minute discussion about the papers that were just read (which is always by far the scariest part, I sit there in a panic the whole time wondering what I'll do if someone asks me a question I can't answer or, even worse, shreds my entire argument into pieces...I keep thinking this will get easier as I go to more and more conferences, but so far it's still really scary). At this conference, you are placed in a group of people and then you exchange papers with them a month or so before the conference and read each other's papers. Then at the actual conference session people show up and watch your group discuss each other's papers. It doesn't sound like it will be all that thrilling to be an audience member at anyone else's conference session, but whatever. The point is, I'm already freaking out about this because a) everyone gets to read my paper and comment on it ahead of time and b) I have to think of semi-intelligent comments to make about six other people's papers. So this morning I checked my e-mail to see who is in my group, and I learned three bad things:
1) Nicole is not in my group (there are about thirty of us in the large umbrella group, but because of our paper topics Nicole and I got shuffled into different sub-groups)
2) Dr. AMP is not the chair of my group (there goes what I was hoping would be my built-in support system)
3) Like any paranoid scholar, I immediately googled everyone on my group to see how much more knowledgable and accomplished they are compared to me, and I found out that one of the women in my group used to work at the company that I spend the vast majority of this paper writing about and bashing. Well, "bashing" is perhaps not the word for it, but my paper is a comparison of this company to another company, and it's pretty clear (at least as the paper is written right now) that I have a vast preference for the work of the other company. This is striking me as a pretty big problem because (here goes another list!) a) it's too late at this point to go out and find another company to research, and it would change the scope of my paper entirely, b) she is probably not going to want to listen to me rant about her former place of work, and c) she probably knows a hell of a lot more about the company than I do, since the majority of my research was based off of their marketing and website (and, okay, the whole point of my paper is how this company presents itself to the public and so it seems valid to have done most of my research based off of their public image, but I can easily envision her telling me that every single impression I have of this company is wrong and I should really do more research and talk directly to people involved with the company).
So now I have no idea what to do, and I don't know whether I should acknowledge right up front that I'm aware of her connection to the company and that I'm open to whatever suggestions she has, or whether it's creepy to have googled her and I should play dumb until she reads my paper next month. My only hope is that she left them on bad terms and will be thrilled that I find them elitist and pedantic and out-of-touch. UGGGGGGHHHHHHH.

Stupid conference stuff! I'm trying to be happy about it, I really am. Generally I enjoy conferences once I get there (and once my presentation is over and I can stop feeling that nervous butterfly feeling in the pit of my stomach) and I'm still feeling very pleased that I was even invited to participate at this one since I know several of my classmates submitted papers and weren't accepted this year. It's actually causing some tension with Stacy because she firmly believes that the only reason Nicole and I got accepted was because Dr. AMP is one of the panel chairs. And while I also agree that that's probably sort of true, well, four other people had to agree to take us on, too (Dr. AMP isn't assertive enough to have demanded that people let us into the group if they didn't want us there), and I don't particularly feel bad for taking advantage of a connection I have to get into a group. Isn't that how the game is played? Next year maybe she'll have a similar connection and her paper will get accepted. Mainly I just think she's bitter because Dr. Hyper pretty much wrote her abstract for her and her paper still didn't get accepted. So I'm trying to be happy that I get to add the most difficult conference to get into to my resume in only my second year, but now I'm even more nervous than I already was.

Also? I bought my plane ticket for that other conference in San Francisco this morning and it cost $475. Ouch. And the department will probably only pay for $100 of that. Luckily I have people to split hotel fees with, and for the other conference a ton of us are going so we'll be able to share gas money and hotel fees to make it all more reasonable, but there's something that kind of sucks about the fact that every year I end up spending at least $1,000 of my own money mainly so that I can go to these things and network. I feel like if I don't make myself known on the conference circuit I'll never make connections and I'll ultimately have a really hard time getting a job,* but it's frustrating to have to spend so much of my money on business travel. I feel like my department and university should be ponying up much more money for these professional development trips, but I doubt that will ever happen. All the higher-ups are constantly telling us to conference, conference, conference, and yet we get very little support to do it. Oh well. At the very least it will be fun to hang out with my friends in Boston and San Francisco. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway (even if my papers are horrible and ruin my academic career before it even really gets started).

*At the six hours of meetings I had to attend yesterday we were told that of the people in the department that went on the job market last year, 100% of them got jobs, including several people who are still ABD. Here's hoping those odds last for three or four more years until I need to start looking for work.