The Great Conference Debate

 I will be spending the next few months writing up my first conference paper with a view to trotting it out left, right and centre over the course of the coming year - although I suppose technically I have the potential to trot out 3 or 4 papers from my first chapter since I cover a few smaller issues within it. 

As I sat down to start my alterations I was made to consider the fact that far ahead of my submission I was laying all of my cards on the table.  My final viva is about 2 years away and yet I am hesitant to divulge all of the nuances of my argument to a public who have not my best interests at heart.  I highly doubt that my ideas are so wholly marketable as to warrant 'theft.'  If such things are even capable of being stolen in a real sense.  After all at this moment there could be someone examining the Victorian novel through the medium of the law in some other college and their expression and mine might be so different as the render our works polar opposites but  still the nagging little fear has remained.

In reality there are positives and negatives to creating and delivering conference papers.  On the positive there is the capacity to test one's theories, to dip a toe into the receptive waters and see how the academic public at large find your theories and the weight of your argument -on the whole a worthwhile endeavour.  After al, you might as well be told by a room full of strangers a year ahead of your viva that your argument lacks clout as to wait until the viva itself and be told that you need to beef up your content.  On the other hand, it does come down to jumping the gun! To go to a conference and tell the world about the theory or academic model that you are pinning a career on seems risky!

I suppose it is the paranoia and nerves of a first timers and is born mostly out of my nerves about answering to a panel of strangers! Answering to my faculty and fellow PhD's is one thing but strangers who don't understand me or my work and trusting my expression to carry me through is rather another!

THERE! That's my weekly existential crisis committed to paper!