Filed by Linda Wang
One of my favorite parts about the national meeting is the abundance of good food at every reception, luncheon, and special event. The downside to all this is that I’m getting really fat.
I’m finding that for all good things, there’s also a dark side. I decided to find out whether other meeting-goers have experienced this phenomenon.
Paul Holmes, a senior scientist at BD, in Franklin Lakes, N.J., likes the fact that he no longer needs to share a hotel room like he did during his postdoc days. That doesn’t mean he can splurge. He still needs to find the best price he can to stay within his company’s budget.
Dilani Jayawardhana, a second-year grad student in chemistry at the University of Texas, Arlington, loves the convenience of public transportation, because it’s a rarity in Texas. On the flip side, she was on a shuttle yesterday morning that was delayed because of an accident. “In that situation, I wish I had my own vehicle,” she says.
Carsten Kreuder, a research chemist at Lanxess in Canada, likes having wireless access available virtually everywhere, unlike 11 years ago, when he last attended an ACS national meeting. The downside is that you still have to do your work, he says.
Sometimes, what seems to be a less-than-ideal situation can turn into an opportunity. Duan Shen, a fifth-year grad student in chemical engineering at RPI says occasionally she won’t find anything in the program that looks related to her research. So she’ll just drop in on a random talk and, to her surprise, discover that they’re using an analytical method that she can apply to her research.
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