u/AshDogBucket

I just finished my masters degree last year and my paper was accepted at an academic conference. I am presenting this weekend. I've never done this before so I don't know what is reasonable or professional for me to expect.

My 2 main questions:

Should I expect that I will have access to a screen? In other words should I be making a PowerPoint for my 15 minute presentation? I have asked the people who let me know my paper was accepted, and have gotten no response from them. (For context, there are three or four of us presenting on similar topics and then there will be a panel discussion afterwards.)

Is it completely unreasonable to expect that you have the schedule for a conference within, I don't know, a week of the event? I just realized I can only cancel my registration for this weekend's event 7 days or more in advance.. but we are now two days away and I don't have the schedule. As I am trying to arrange transportation and coverage, it seems a little unreasonable to me but I don't know if this is just typical. Aside from knowing what time I present on saturday, I have zero information about this conference's schedule of events. There is no information online.

(I used to be an administrative assistant who assisted phds in booking and getting reimbursed for their academic conferences... in the STEM world that I was a part of, there was always an abundance of information well in advance to be able to justify and support attending conferences. I now work in the humanities and it's just blowing my mind that this lack of information could be acceptable.)

(Context: did not grow up evangelical; joined evangelical school in high school; left 20 years ago. Im a woman and purity culture did a number on me.)

Something finally hit me tonight as incredibly ironic. When I was in the middle of it as a teenage girl, getting the messaging telling me that I was responsible for men's lust etc, and that i had to be excessively modest but still somehow attractive...

If clothes were sexy/ flattering, they were NOT comfortable for me.

Nowadays, I'm completely separated from it all. I'm married to someone who was never evangelical, and did not go through purity culture. I have a volatile relationship with clothes - I am horribly indecisive and constantly struggling to figure out what I want to wear (in addition to having dimensions that make it hard to even find clothes i CAN wear). My spouse always says that the most important thing is that clothes are comfortable. Tonight i realized:

If clothes aren't sexy/flattering to my husband, they are NOT comfortable for me. 🙄🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Oh the joys of all the paradoxical garbage they drilled into us. It took so much work for me to get past the idea that I should never be sexy to anyone ever... and now I'm still sometimes basically immobilized by the idea that I must always be sexy to my spouse. (He, BTW, always claims i am sexy, even when i know for a fact I look like garbage!)

Anyone else experience this?

I just recently moved here from the Midwest. When I lived there, my annual solo birthday trip was to Lake Superior. Every year I visited different pieces of it, with the goal of one day covering all the (publicly accessible) pieces of shoreline and islands. I mixed it up with backpacking trips, car camping trips, hotel trips, Airbnb trips. Getting to the lake itself was always at minimum a 5 hour drive, so i really only went there once a year.

I am in the Willamette valley looking for something similar for my annual solo birthday trips. I already go to the coast and the mountains all the time. I'm also already working on checking state parks and NPS sites off my list.

Any suggestions on places/areas I can revisit and explore year after year to keep discovering new things? I'm open to anything that's 3-10 hours away. I will be spending 5-6 days on each trip, and they happen in mid September. I hope to spend time hiking, looking at birds, camping, having peace and quiet. Also, I bring my dog with me.

Maybe eastern Oregon? Or Vancouver island?

(If nothing else, probably my annual trip will just be exploring different new areas of Oregon, Washington, and BC each year. Also, I used to live in Alaska, so remoteness, bear country, cold weather camping, etc are AOK with me.)