Conference Mixer

Put 1000 chemists in a room (yeah, I know, your head is spinning already) and give them beer and drinks and a little bit of food.

If you get a good view of the food table you will be able to watch The Grad Student Feeding Frenzy. A much-hailed event with surreptitious betting alongside, the blood sport that is Free Food is not to be missed.

Over in a corner you will see the Big Brains, hashing out their latest plan to take over the world. Or they might just be quietly sipping their one free beer before they push a knife between the ribs of the weakest link and slip away unnoticed. The Big Brains are not to be trusted.

The Middle Years are all jostling near the bar, trying to touch a Big Brain or get him/her to notice them, and trying to order their free beer. After the one free one is gone, it's off to the ticket line for multiple tickets for various combinations of hard liquor, wine or beer.

Immediately upon arrival, you search for someone who might know Who Got the Job. Luckily it's a grad student who knows, so getting the information out of him is a Piece of Cake, which you've scored by knowing one of the food servers and slipping him a fiver. Finding out about The Job doesn't settle you though, because it's not someone you know and it's not someone who makes logical sense, given the competition. This is singularly annoying information, so you latch onto Former Supervisor who will purchase your drinks for you for the rest of the night. At one point you might suggest buying a round, and then back out of this suggestion because by the time this happens you're drunk. It doesn't help that Former Supervisor keeps saying, "We heard that Hilary didn't get the job, but then when we heard that A didn't get the job, well then we were floored. Of all the people who should have gotten the job, it was A. After all, he's amazing, he won't be unemployed for long. I just couldn't believe he didn't get it." (Former Supervisor got a punch in the arm at this point, and I indicated that okay, could we maybe not drive the point home quite so much, seeing as I'm standing right there and while I'm sure that A is as fabulous as you say, I am also fabulous. Now go and get me another G&T.)

I fall into the Middle Years category, but I am not impressed with the Big Brains, most of whom I know quite well, including Former Supervisor. I probably should assume more reverence than I do, but I just can't. I'm not the reverent type, when it comes to colleagues. Most of them don't impress me all that much, especially after I get to know them; this goes for humans in general actually.

It was the regular Conference Mixer First Night Drunk Fest. Chemists drink a lot, and they don't get out much but you might not realize this because out in the wild they look just like regular people, not likely to bring up charge density calculations or thin film manufacture or the orientations of molecules on a gold surface, or the turnover rate of a particular reaction or any of the other things they discuss (and the things are myriad). But in that room, the thousand or so assembled are likely to discuss any of these things and more, and thus set themselves apart from the general populace.

That's how I spent last Saturday night. Drinking gin & tonic that my PhD supervisor bought for me, chatting about the latest gossip, finding myself to still be relatively popular in the big chemistry picture. It was actually good to be there, but now that I'm back I'm finding myself a bit depressed, missing my work and thinking about how I can possibly get the next job in the lineup, which is at a university 20 minutes up the road and which I stand a relatively good chance of getting. Then again, I stood a relatively good chance of getting the other job and that one didn't pan out, so best not to get my hopes up too much.