At the Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2010 conference I learned a fair amount about the general culture

of conferences. Previously I had been to a single graphics conference which was small, but this Young

Researchers Track allowed me to attend both ITS and EDM, since they were co-located, and it was an

enlightening experience. Enlightening in that, I was able to see two different types of sub-cultures of a

single community which I found very interesting. Additionally I recognized the significant importance

of my own research in that community, and was surprised to see how many separate people were

excited, interested and anticipating the results of my research. This experience truly vitalized my own

motivations towards my particularly topic and I left both eager and excited about ways in which I can

improve my own work. Lastly, being surrounded by people who work in my field, I enjoyed the rich

conversation about different areas each attendee was working in, which inspired a whole array of new

ideas for me to consider. As well, not just new ideas but as I listened to the various explanations from

the talks I became more well rounded as an expert in the field because I gained better understandings of

concepts which I had not focused on previously.