Four years ago, at the same location in San Francisco, I was a senior-year college student who came to BPS Meeting for the first time. I traveled to the conference alone all the way from Beijing by myself. The international data roaming package I bought was working but broken signals. I managed to do everything well from the airport, riding the subway lines, dragging my luggage to a small hotel on Powell St.

The next day I went to the Ion Channel and Drug Discovery satellites meeting, thinking that there must be some good stuff. I was first surprised that the meeting charged an extra $150 to attend. But since I was already there, I paid for the meeting. The next big shock came from the coffee break and lunch break time. "Oh Peter, long time no see", "Hey Mary, I haven't seen you for a while" (exciting voices) ... Everyone seemed to know each other so well and many of them seemed to be old friends. I scanned around the surroundings noticing that everyone had a conversation partner. I held my coffee cup, eagerly looking for someone to talk to. Not much luck, most of the time, everyone was engaged in a conversation. The coffee break was so long. I remember I went to the bathroom and locked my booth. All of a sudden, I found a relief - it is so good to not need to socialize with others.

Later during the conference, I learned from Wonpil, then my summer internship advisor, that the ion channel community originally is the basis of the Biophysical Society and they know each other well. So it makes sense that I felt that way at the meeting. The later part of my 2018 conference experience was much better. I asked lots of questions, I took contacts of numerous people, I emailed many of them after the conference, I was surprised that somewhere in Germany there were researchers who were also studying the weird behaviors of quinone molecules. I had never been to such a big conference with more than 5,000 posters. It was an ecstatic experience, given the number of attendees and the richness of science.

Since the 2018 BPS meeting, I have been to different conferences such as Golden Gorge Conference (GRC), SGP annual meeting, and numerous symposiums. The 2018 BPS Meeting laid a cornerstone in building my conference skills. Now as a grad student, I checked the hotel, conference venue, and conference agenda in advance. I ask questions and engage in conversations with various researchers. I go to meeting rooms knowing that there is always a trade-off of going to this and missing another. I appreciate different presentation styles, dissect the development of their stories. Slightly more relaxed and chill.

This morning while sitting in a symposium, I overheard the two undergrads from our lab sitting at either side to me talking, "Hey Turner, look at the agenda book and circle the ones you want to go. I am planning to go to the Undergrad Pizza and this platform talk..." The younger generation with friends definitely navigate better than I once did.