Air travel is a thing of the past, or at least it has been in the past couple years. Nowadays conferences are attended from the comfort of our closet home-office. Although there are undeniable advantages in not being in the USA (please keep me out of there!), Sadia wonders:
How to stay awake until 3am to present your poster at a virtual US conference?
Dear Sadia,
You are talking about a possible conflict with your sleeping schedule? I thought not having one was a major pre-requisite of academia. I don’t even remember what a sleeping routine looks like.
Assuming you really, really want to stick to one, you should convince your body, mind and soul that you are actually in the USA. A couple of days before the conference, you should “fly” to the USA: sit on the couch for 10 hours in a row, watching trashy movies on a tiny screen and getting some unsatisfactory sleep every now and then. Once you “land” move your clock to USA time and stick to it till your presentation. You will live like a vampire, shunned by society and unable to properly interact with the people physically around you, but your presentation will be a piece of cake.
Whether you stick to this fool-proof plan or not remember, coffee is your friend. Don’t be cheap on the java the day/night of the presentation. Legend has it that if you can survive the 100-th cup of coffee of the day you enter a state of caffeine-induced Nirvana, in which everyone else will seem slower than you, both in body and in mind.
At least you get to avoid american “coffee”, since you are not actually there.
Yours truly,
The Sassy Scientist
PS: 97, 98, 99, …
