Conference for scientists

Vita Scientia is a conference which gathers life scientists from around the world every two years. I have never previously heard about this kind of event organized by Vilnius University students but as soon as my biology teacher a month prior to the conference offered to take part as a volunteer I agreed with no thought of hesitation. 
Well, I didn't even expect to be regretful about such a decision in the future but I was wrong. It appeared to be on the last and busiest day of my Christmas holidays and the organizers were asking to volunteer for thirteen hours straight! I was devastated to finish last works and tasks of holidays but there was no way I could miss this kind of event. Not only I was interested to participate in it as much as possible myself, but I couldn't refuse to help out the organizers as there were only ten of us volunteers. So a little past 7:30 am I was already at the agreed place. To my surprise, there was nothing to do there and all of us ten were simply sitting besides two register tables, yawning and waiting for the event to start. Our main and only task was to welcome and register the participants. From around 8 am we finally felt the burden of the workload, however even though there were ten of us, all the necessary for registration papers were in a single duplicate and I, for example, couldn't participate in and benefit the process. It was awkward to stand there by the side of those overwhelmed with the amount of people attending at the same time, but in the end I found myself busy from time to time as well. Also, after going though the program of the conference speeches I rejected the idea to listen to any of them. They all seemed very complicated and only understandable to scientist of high level.
At around lunch time I left to study at the local library and was planning to return to help to tidy up after the conference but one of volunteers reported in advance that they were released earlier than planned and there was no need in me helping out. I was relieved to acknowledge that I'm free to carry on with my studying but at the same time I felt that there was too little of my contribution to the smooth proceeding of Vita Scientia. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the time spent there, also once again I ascertained that it's much easer to work in a team.



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