A few months ago, I have applied for this year’s Reinforcement Learning Summer School in Barcelona and got rejected. More precisely, I was placed on a “waiting list” which given the popularity of the event I interpreted as a rejection, and moved on. Then, about three weeks before the start of that summer school, the unexpected happened: I was given a first-come-first-serve chance at late registration, and I managed to get in. This post reflects a bit on my experiences in Barcelona as well as a more recent institute retreat in the Kleinwalsertal. Scientists regularly visit venues such as conferences, retreats or summer schools to present/discuss their work or meet and learn from people, and Barcelona/Kleinwalsertal are my first trips.
As I was not sure whether my expenses for the summer school would be covered, I needed to find a budget solution for accommodation. I decided to make one of twelve bunk beds of a hostel room in between the Platja de La Mar Bella and the Poblenou campus of Universitat Pompeu Fabra my home for ten days. However I had some unexpectedly good sleep there, as the hostel was geared more towards expats and remote workers than your usual party tourist. Breakfast was also good, and so I was actually not the only summer school attendant that chose this hostel as their accommodation. And so I realized that it doesn’t always have to be a single room in a fancy hotel.
There were a lot of attendants on both events, around 100 for each to be more precise! This meant that there were a lot of new people from all over Europe (and some even from outside Europe) with interesting research backgrounds and topics to talk to and socialize with. The summer school’s eight days were packed with lectures, tutorials, poster sessions and a few social events. I enjoyed basically all of these, although it was a lot of new content and impressions which did tire me towards the end (I even caught a cold from the overpowered air conditioning). Barcelona is a really nice city, and I especially enjoyed the relaxed summer evenings and mornings on the beach with swimming and volleyball. I also enjoyed my two vacation days after the summer school that enabled me to do some tourism. The retreat was organized by the IAS of TU Darmstadt, and I prepended a nice bike tour to the six-day long program (that included a hiking day) which also included talks, poster sessions, practical sessions and blocks for group-specific discussions. The mountain scenery was beautiful, and I played even more volleyball in midst of the scenery while cool drinks on the large terrace of our mountain house made our discussions very relaxing.
I think I could get used to these “workation”/“bleisure” trips. Attending these scientific venues is very energy-consuming, but not in a stressful way such as regular work days. In some way I feel quite refreshed after them, provided I can have at least one quiet day afterwards. With the help of these two events, I actually managed to enjoy summer and stay energetic while keeping most of my vacation days for harder times! The two workations have definitely been a welcome change in my daily business, but we will see how sustainably I can use them as proxy vacations in the longer run. I am now ramping up for my first own paper submission in the following weeks, and it’s definitely going to be stressful at times. Who knows, maybe I’ll need some of those saved vacation days after the paper deadline.