NOTE: I'm not sure if it's of use, but I'm trying to omit names or other possible identifiers as --if I understand it correctly-- it might make me 'traceable' to the party discussed here, and this "traceability" (is there a synonym for this? blogspot seems to think that it's not a proper English word..) might have adverse consequences for me e.g in the form of they're using my name to make some not-so-delightful remarks on the web, so.. okay. I'd like to get immediately to the topic, but before that, let me make another two points of note to consider:
1. I'm a master level post graduate student from a developing country in the tropical part of Asia. I use scientific conferences as a reason to travel far, because when you never have that much cash to blow out, you need the so-called "greater good" to make your travel somewhat more relevant. In my case, that "greater good" is the scientific conferences.
2. While it might contain the word "scientific", this post (or even this blog) is by no means scientific, i.e. my 'research' about the particular topic in this post hasn't been in any way supported by a rigorous methodology. It's more of a view from my personal angle, so do feel free to disagree XD
Okay. So here's the story.
These last two or three weeks I've been pretty tense due to some things, and one of those "things" is my attempt to meet the paper submission deadline for this thing. I've been planning to join it ever since I found the information about it because of some reasons: 1) This is of my relevant interest. Well. At least at that time when I decided. Now it has kind of shifted, though :p 2) I want to go to the city because my most favorite music group on earth is based in the city but my mom would kill me if she knew I travel that far only for some kind of meet and greet or for the sake of teenage-like idolatry. 3) The real forum (i.e. the non-'hacked' one) is to be held in Melbourne and I did want to go there, but I no longer wanted to because I used to fancy a guy who lives in this city but now I no longer fancy him plus I don't feel like experiencing the continent on summer because I heard that it's effin' hot there, and I'm just dying to go to "the city" because I just love the band so much that I'm willing to do things even if it's only to get that sense of being close to them. P.S: I've warned you not to tell my mom about this.
It was actually a bit unusual when compared to the previous forums that I attended, in which the submission deadline was suddenly advanced for almost two months than the date that I remembered when I checked it some weeks ago. As the forum seems legit (judging from the 'exciting' graphics yet neatly worded descriptions of the website), I thought to myself that maybe they receive so many paper submissions that they need to advance the deadline to limit the number of papers coming in; so it seems like a really tough competition; and that if my paper got accepted, it would be totally awesome. So I worked pretty hard on writing; and I put aside some other things on my to-do-list to be able to meet this deadline. Then, as what people have been complaining about me for like all the time for being that "last-minute person" when it comes to paperwork, on the last day of submission, I submitted my abstract. I intentionally wanted to submit my full paper as well because the instruction is somewhat ambiguous about what should be submitted on that date. I have anticipated for the worse, though, by by writing full paper and be ready to submit it on that date although I'd actually prefer more time to edit it and make some other 'fine-tuning'. However, a friend convinced me that a mere abstract submission is okay, so.. I submitted the abstract without the full paper; and decided to do some further corrections to my full paper text.
After successfully uploaded my abstract, I then casually clicked all the click-able links on the website, because.. well. As a relatively inexperienced scientist/academician, I'm excited, and I'm curious to know more about the possible experience that I could get by attending this particular forum. However, what I found was rather shocking when I read this segment, because.. it's just weird. Some titles are just.. vague, and some others just don't fit to the topic in whatever way that I could imagine. Further browsing also made me realize that this 'organization' holds so many events at such 'packed' schedule, so it just popped up in my mind that.. it might be a scam.
So I googled. And yes, it turns out that it is quite likely a scam indeed.
1. I'm a master level post graduate student from a developing country in the tropical part of Asia. I use scientific conferences as a reason to travel far, because when you never have that much cash to blow out, you need the so-called "greater good" to make your travel somewhat more relevant. In my case, that "greater good" is the scientific conferences.
2. While it might contain the word "scientific", this post (or even this blog) is by no means scientific, i.e. my 'research' about the particular topic in this post hasn't been in any way supported by a rigorous methodology. It's more of a view from my personal angle, so do feel free to disagree XD
Okay. So here's the story.
These last two or three weeks I've been pretty tense due to some things, and one of those "things" is my attempt to meet the paper submission deadline for this thing. I've been planning to join it ever since I found the information about it because of some reasons: 1) This is of my relevant interest. Well. At least at that time when I decided. Now it has kind of shifted, though :p 2) I want to go to the city because my most favorite music group on earth is based in the city but my mom would kill me if she knew I travel that far only for some kind of meet and greet or for the sake of teenage-like idolatry. 3) The real forum (i.e. the non-'hacked' one) is to be held in Melbourne and I did want to go there, but I no longer wanted to because I used to fancy a guy who lives in this city but now I no longer fancy him plus I don't feel like experiencing the continent on summer because I heard that it's effin' hot there, and I'm just dying to go to "the city" because I just love the band so much that I'm willing to do things even if it's only to get that sense of being close to them. P.S: I've warned you not to tell my mom about this.
It was actually a bit unusual when compared to the previous forums that I attended, in which the submission deadline was suddenly advanced for almost two months than the date that I remembered when I checked it some weeks ago. As the forum seems legit (judging from the 'exciting' graphics yet neatly worded descriptions of the website), I thought to myself that maybe they receive so many paper submissions that they need to advance the deadline to limit the number of papers coming in; so it seems like a really tough competition; and that if my paper got accepted, it would be totally awesome. So I worked pretty hard on writing; and I put aside some other things on my to-do-list to be able to meet this deadline. Then, as what people have been complaining about me for like all the time for being that "last-minute person" when it comes to paperwork, on the last day of submission, I submitted my abstract. I intentionally wanted to submit my full paper as well because the instruction is somewhat ambiguous about what should be submitted on that date. I have anticipated for the worse, though, by by writing full paper and be ready to submit it on that date although I'd actually prefer more time to edit it and make some other 'fine-tuning'. However, a friend convinced me that a mere abstract submission is okay, so.. I submitted the abstract without the full paper; and decided to do some further corrections to my full paper text.
After successfully uploaded my abstract, I then casually clicked all the click-able links on the website, because.. well. As a relatively inexperienced scientist/academician, I'm excited, and I'm curious to know more about the possible experience that I could get by attending this particular forum. However, what I found was rather shocking when I read this segment, because.. it's just weird. Some titles are just.. vague, and some others just don't fit to the topic in whatever way that I could imagine. Further browsing also made me realize that this 'organization' holds so many events at such 'packed' schedule, so it just popped up in my mind that.. it might be a scam.
So I googled. And yes, it turns out that it is quite likely a scam indeed.
I'm shocked. And when I'm shocked, I read. Until I feel less shocked. And.. I found some interesting things here and here.
Good news is, though, I might not be that far of being at lost. I haven't paid for the conference fee and I haven't submitted my full paper. And... I guess I'm just lucky because those people that I consulted to about this particular topic were just.. really helpful. They gave me a balanced view and broadened my knowledge even further, calmed down my 'paranoia', helped me to divert with other more interesting subjects.. and.. it's just nice, although..
Good news is, though, I might not be that far of being at lost. I haven't paid for the conference fee and I haven't submitted my full paper. And... I guess I'm just lucky because those people that I consulted to about this particular topic were just.. really helpful. They gave me a balanced view and broadened my knowledge even further, calmed down my 'paranoia', helped me to divert with other more interesting subjects.. and.. it's just nice, although..
I don't know. This is a new issue for me. I might not even understand things correctly as I only do a quick read on those webpages, but.. I'd say, personally, it's a great lesson for me. To be more careful. To be more cautious. To be more knowledgeable. To be more selective. To appreciate complexities. To learn to better resist the 'temptation' of being able to bypass the what-should-be-complex procedure (because the complexities should've had reasons, I guess?). To remind myself that for the things that are worth working on, then working-on-it is exactly what I need to do because at times, patience does have its reward.
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I don't know if I wanted to elaborate further. I guess I'd just let it slide for this time. I might revisit it later.
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