I just got back from a pretty cool conference in Istanbul, Turkey. My university really pushes that you present your work at least once a year somewhere, so that generally means attending at least one conference.

This push to present your work is a pretty common requirement of PhD programs. For some of you reading, that might be super obvious. But for this first gen college grad from a working-class family, I have essentially been learning everything about the Ivory Tower as it comes flying at me.

I could probably write a book on problems I’ve caused myself by not understanding places to find funding, cool opportunities or building the right skills. But I persevere.

And this week, I’ve been thinking about how little I knew about attending conferences as a PhD student before starting.

And how expensive they are.

And how this is probably a really important thing to inquire about if you are doing interviews with universities and considering joining the PhD cohorts.

My university has a boatload of administrative issues, but I will say that they have come through on the conference funding for me over the last three years.

My first conference was in New Orleans. They funded my flight from the UK, registration fee, a single hotel room suggested by the conference, taxis to and from the airport to the hotel, and provided a daily stipend for food.

It was kind of awesome. Because the conference was held in the French Quarter, a very tourist district of New Orleans, and the hotel did not include breakfast, I generally went over my food stipend every day between a coffee for breakfast and a proper dinner in the evening, but I essentially had a daily £25 coupon towards food.

And if I was really stressed about money, I probably could’ve hit the grocery store and made sandwiches all week with that money – because another bonus of my school is that they weren’t super fussed about exactly where the food receipt was from.

This may sound silly, but I used to work for a company that would give you a food stipend when you are working away from the main location and they would get upset if you used it at a grocery store and required you use it at restaurants.

The following year, I went to a more local conference in Leeds. The school paid again for the train to and from Leeds, the single accommodation (which was in student housing but was really nice), the registration fee and provided a food stipend.

This year funding was a little tighter and there was some concern about whether they would provide funding or not. In the end, they paid for the plane tickets, the registration fee, taxis to and from the airport in Turkey, and a shared accommodation hotel room with a classmate of mine who was also presenting. They did not provide a stipend for food.

I also applied to a second conference, where I could present online, and I paid the registration fee for that one.

However, from chatting with other PhD students across these conferences, I’ve learned that lots of schools still expect you to present but provide no funding at all to do so.

Or the funding is super competitive and only awarded to some of the students, not all of them.

And these conferences are actually really valuable to PhD students for a number of reasons.

First of all, it removes you from your little supervisor bubble of feedback. Because for the vast majority of this PhD journey, all the feedback on my work comes from three people. And those three people are supposed to be incredibly critical and nit-picky about what I’m doing.

When you bring your work out into the wild, you get different feedback and it’s at what actually seems to be a more normal academic level – which is not the PhD thesis level. I think there’s a little more assumption that you do know what you’re talking about, as opposed to supervisors constantly questioning if you do. The audience will still ask questions and they may disagree with parts of your research, but in most cases, they will ask their questions and get on with their day.

Those questions, even if they sort of feel like they suck, are super useful. They are highlight spots where you do still need to learn more. Or they may ask questions and you immediately know the answers, building a confidence that is hard to find in supervisory meetings. This is all really great.

And this is just specifically about your presentation (where you are also building presentation skills and paper writing skills).

You also get to hear other academics delivering work, often in various stages of progress, and hear new ideas that are the cutting edge of research in your field. You can also see what sort of themes and interests are emerging.

There’s also the networking – which I am terrible at but can be really useful. Actually, I think this is a point in favor of smaller conferences too. My best networking experiences have been either at smaller conferences or within the working group I am a part of, since there is more time for interaction on that smaller scale.

Some of the bigger conferences feel very clique and like it’s hard to speak to the more established academics.

At the one I just returned from actually, three of the keynote speakers were English speakers and those of us who didn’t speak Turkish were a smaller contingent of the conference, so my classmate and I spent a lot of time chatting with these lovely folks – probably more than we usually would’ve if they’d had more interesting options than us 😉

But during one of those chats, I was explaining my interest and background to one person and another of the speaker’s mentioned he’s trying to create a stage management professor position at his university and he would love to keep in touch since it’s hard to find academics who have also actually done the thing too.

Exciting times!

So just a thing to know – if you’re interested in the PhD/grad student life at some point, there are a lot of surprise expenses and conferences are one of them.

If your university doesn’t offer funding, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be paying out of pocket. Almost all conferences have some kind of bursary you can apply for – but those are also limited and competitive.

And there are additional sources of grants and funding specifically for attending conferences that you can look into as well.

Do you have a graduate degree? Did you present at conferences? Did your university fund you?