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Reflections on my first three years at ARVO

  

It wasn't until my third ARVO that I began to feel like I “got it.”  My work crosses many disciplinary lines.  Thus, I have had the opportunity to present at a remarkable variety of scientific and clinical conferences on a broad range of topics given the early stage of my career.  Most meetings are quite similar, but none are quite like ARVO!

The first year that I came to ARVO was very overwhelming.  The size of the meeting, especially cramped into the Ft. Lauderdale Convention Center, is part of it.  Taking a step into the poster hall where 1,000 posters a day are displayed is also a shocking amount of material to try to digest.  However, that room is what makes ARVO so unique.  At most conferences the energy seems focused on the paper sessions and the plenary sessions, but at ARVO, the poster session is where the action is.  It took me that whole first year to fully appreciate that aspect of ARVO.

Each day I search through my iPhone app for posters I want to see and add them to my schedule, but I also systematically walk through the entire hall each day, pausing to look at anything that catches my eye.  It is always amazing how much stuff I’d miss if I only tried to focus on what I’d searched for.  (Makes me lament the good ol’ days of libraries where you’d bump into an unrelated book or journal article more easily.)  Finally, like a Paris café, if you sit in the poster hall long enough the entire world (of ophthalmology) will pass by!

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