Here's why you should volunteer in conferences during your bachelors/undergraduate

If there’s one reason why I graduated with a very good reputation and great scholarship it is because I did everything to stay active in such a small, funding and activity limited school. Don’t get me wrong, I love Celal Bayar, I try to visit my professors there as often as possible and recently I started working with them on a research project. But when I was a student support for extracurricular programs was very limited. I used any possible way to get my name out. One of the best experiences I had was to volunteer in June 2013 on an international conference and in August 2013 on a national conference.

In Celal Bayar, students didn’t like spending much time on campus. Until 2 years ago it wasn’t much developed. So the participation from students was very limited. Both of the conferences were organized by civil engineering and mechanical engineering department. It was a great chance for me to meet new faculty and get to know better the ones I took classes from.

During the international conference, besides all mentioned above I got to interact with a world wide known professor in Texas A&M University. And guess what happened next? Yes he served on my committee. Even though I couldn’t get much as I wanted from him getting to know him and taking his class was priceless.

During the national conference, again I met very prestigious national professors, I have known most of their names through the books we studied during the classes. I knew I was moving to States with Fulbright Scholarship so their interest was different in a way.

I would recommend everyone take part in conferences as a volunteer if you can’t present something. You meet so many people and they actually get very excited to see young undergrads in such positions. At the end of the day you’ll have bunch of business cards and a bag of goodies.