Our contributing editor Radu Craiu, University of Toronto, recalls his early experiences of attending conferences as a young, green student… and the transformative power of simply being acknowledged.

I still remember my first conference. I was an inexperienced graduate student with some vague idea about conferences as mediums for exchanging ideas, making friends, and creating networks of like-minded individuals. Alas, none of these beautiful things come easily to neophytes. Just like one can easily separate the tourists from the locals in a beautiful Tuscan village, so green students stand out from the experienced ones. Besides experience, other criteria helped with the clustering and classification. Large departments tend to send larger groups of students at conferences, making us all realize that the size of one’s clique matters. Since no coin has only one side, later in my career I realized that the disadvantage comes from having to stand out from the group, which is a lot easier when the latter has size one. Nevertheless, at that initial dip into scientific socialization I was enviously eyeing the senior students who had stories, sometimes also known as gossip, to which even faculty paid attention. Initially, it is harder to separate the social component from the scientific one, but for those students reading this, please be assured that the latter dominates the former.

Conferences can be a fertile ground for a student’s imposter syndrome, especially when the ideas they are promoting are not bringing anyone to tears (of joy, evidently). It took me a while to realize that not eliciting an immediate reaction can also be a good thing, perhaps suggesting that the audience found the idea interesting enough to not eviscerate it on the spot. I also learned, in time, that having a nice idea is not enough to impress, and one must repeat the feat a few times before people start to pay attention to you, as you’re standing in a corner, drenched in unjustifiable sweat while smiling at your shoes.

It is hard to say if getting visibility at an international conference is more difficult these days. On the one hand, there are so many more shiny new things, moving a lot more quickly in the limelight, so that registering on anyone’s radar takes a longer sustained effort. On the other hand, the discipline has grown immensely and so have the numbers and sizes of the various scientific communities within, each with their own leaders, upcoming stars, and scientific gatherings.

I wish I had known back then that finding someone you can talk to at a conference is a gift not a given, one that should be cherished and certainly never taken for granted. Of course, having someone to talk to brings up the question of what to talk about. One is tempted to talk shop, and by that I mean research ideas, but wary of giving away too much information—we’ve all heard stories of getting scooped—and afraid that too deep a conversation about student life and its trappings can be a buzzkill. Again, it takes time, patience, perhaps even some bad experiences, before one can reach the right tone for such professional exchanges. In time, a friendship may flourish, but that’s not something that one can plan or count on, just like in “civilian” life.

One may wonder why, especially at the beginning of a career, we insist on participating in conferences where no one knows us. I dare conjecture that it is not a hunger for humbling punishment that pushes us forward, but the aspirational aim of belonging to a community of people we admire and whose respect we seek. Because it is one thing to work alone in your office with the only recognition being provided by referee reports, and another to be approached after your conference talk by someone who is even more excited about the work than you.

All of which brings me to the first time my presence was acknowledged: by a simple, yet mighty, nod. This marked some sort of phase transition, as soon afterwards someone talked to me about something other than me being in the way. As a kid I had dreamed of being the Invisible Man, and now I was celebrating having the opposite superpower.

After that milestone, my professional travels and encounters brought many joys, some anxiety, even perplexing moments, but never boredom. That nod cemented my belief in the power of having a community of individuals with whom one can share ideas, principles and comforting thoughts. It gave me the opportunity to talk to young people eager to be recognized, as well as to legends of our field who made me feel young and clueless again. It allowed me to learn from different cultures, be they national, institutional or departmental. Just like travel is the last great pleasure left alone by health specialists and moralists, conferences represent the last link to yesteryear’s statistics’ research environment

And after all these years, are there lessons to be imparted based on the things I have seen, not only those I have done? A big one is to be kind, fair, generous, unenvious, and curious, and to appreciate and cherish the opportunity to mingle with others.

Just like a deep pool of water turns light into a magical blue hue, while small puddles look prosaic and pedestrian, so statisticians can find extra pizzazz and project a better image when they stand together.