notquiteagrad

Hi all, this is my first post though I've been lurking for quite some time now, but I was hoping to get some advice on how to move on from here and there is no better place to ask. So right now it looks like I will be trying again next year. In the meantime, my plan is to take some classes and perhaps work on a project independently, but ideally, I'd really like to find a research position at a lab. I'm in linguistics, and am interested in psycho- and neurolinguistics, so between linguistics and psychology departments, there is a decent number of labs where I am. However, I didn't go to school in the States and so have no connections, no recommendations from former advisors and imagine my only options here are to either contact faculty members directly or look for ads on linguist list and such, but those are kinda rare. So how would one go about this? How should I approach professors? The second part of my questions is, should I try to work at the lab of a future potential advisor, or is this a bad idea? I've read people saying some schools are reluctant to hire from within and there is also somebody's horror story that was posted here a while ago, about this guy that moved his family across the country to work for his potential advisor and ended up being rejected. Scary. Ok, so there is a third and last part of my question, bear with me just a little longer! I will be attending a conference soon and pretty much all future potential advisors will be there. I am not exaggerating. If it is a good idea to try to make some contacts there, what do you think would be the best way to do that? I can get extremely anxious in situations like this and end up as articulate as a chimp, so I often look better on paper or at least in situations where I am not super aware of being evaluated, but is this too good an opportunity to pass up? I really do appreciated any advice.