I know conferences are ridiculous, but students are usually eager to attend because they are told that a history of presenting papers at conferences looks good on their CV. So, as a student, I also spent a lot of money to get here to present a paper for only 10 minutes. How expensive 10 minutes are, ha! But it’s OK because the main purpose of my trip is to go and see my friends in the U.K. (unfortunately, I don’t have any friends in Portugal).
Presenting a paper is just like a ritual. No one is interested in your paper, maybe some are. If you are lucky and your topic is interesting enough, you will be asked questions after your presentation. But if you are in a big group of speakers, and the question time is set after all presentations, and what is worse, you present your paper earlier in the session, you are highly unlikely to get questions. So, you are totally bored during the session.
But I was lucky that I had someone (a professor from Colorado) tell me my paper was interesting. He made my day.
