Conference anxiety dreams

Getting on the wrong bus, being sent to school by your mother in your underwear without socks because the laundry wasn't finished, studying for the wrong exam, suddenly realizing you have forgotten one course in your syllabus, these are anxiety dreams that trouble us all. I sometimes wonder if such dreams are the exclusive domain of introverts, or whether Type A aggressives also have their peace disturbed in this way.

For the past ten years or so, a new category of anxiety dream has interrupted my sleep, now comprising the majority of such annoyances; the conference anxiety dream. I'm long past the point in my career where performances at conference matter much. I've done my networking and to be honest, I probably spend more energy avoiding people who are trying to find me than I do seeking people out. I know how to give talks that get my points across, know how not to overwhelm people with data and graphics, know how to relax an audience with a few laughs. But still I dream that...

• After much procrastination, it is an hour before my flight and I finally start packing my suitcase. The clock is ticking much faster than normal. It is fifteen minutes before my flight, and a forty-five minute drive to the airport.
• After much procrastination, it is five minutes before my talk and I finally start to put my slides together, but I can't find the ones I need. Notice I said slides. This is technology I haven't touched for 15 years.
• The conference is held on a warren-like campus, with concurrent sessions in multiple buildings ten minutes apart. My talk is in two minutes; I am lost.
• I reluctantly rearrange my personal life to deliver a keynote address to a group of scientists I've never met, in a different field, in a small college town in the middle of nowhere USA that is impossible to get to. I arrive and my talk is not on the program, and the organizers won't make any concessions to get me on the agenda.
• I have to give my talk in my underwear without socks because my mother sent me to the conference without them.

What does all of this mean? It means that the anxieties of the adult, that the anxieties of a scientist, have penetrated my subconscious and pushed all that adolescent angst out... forty years later.

It probably also suggests that conference organizers should spend less time fretting about name badge designs, and more time thinking about venues and schedules so that moving between concurrent sessions seem seamless. I confess that there was once an international conference where I had seven or eight scheduled talks, session chairs, meetings. Without any awareness on my part, the poor organizers built the whole programme around me. When we finally met that week, they were shocked to find this shy, friendly guy who had no idea how much trouble he had caused. They were expecting a Type A aggressive, of course. They confessed they had spent a lot of time silently cursing me as they juggled around sessions and rooms to make it all work.

Come to think of it, maybe this is when those conference anxiety dreams began.