Volunteering in a conference in your undergrad

I remember my freshman (1st) year in bachelors. All we cared about was passing the classes and enjoying free lessons. None of us had what to do after school, and none of us cared either since we had more than 3 years.

On my sophomore (2nd) year, I was going through some family financial problems which lead me to take charge of my life and start earning. At that time, and after having a terrible site summer internship, I thought going into academia was easiest and best path for me.

My passion and hard work helped me get a position and research funding. Beside my research work my advisor encouraged me to volunteer in 1 national and 1 international conference. Here is how my experience went;

1. In the international conference, I met a professor who then became part of my MSc committee in Texas A&M.

2. All faculty from my school recognized me and I built my very first academic network. This network later helped me getting references and getting paper work done easily. Besides that, every time something national or international was going on, I was one of the first students they called to.

3. During the national conference I met many recognized researchers, and one ended up being coworker of my dad from the 90's. You can guess how it helped me stand out in crowd.

4. I learned the research technical slang before even getting bachelors degree.

5. The vision and mission of the conferences motivated me to move forward in hard time in academia.

6. Never paid to attend those conferences and during technical sessions, I could attend the ones I like.

7. Got the goodies bag along with published papers.

These being said, I highly recommend every undergraduate student to take part in such conferences. I believe all academics and graduate students should help young researchers get involved as soon as possible. I think this is the strongest way to get students get involved in research.