As I move out of the region where I've lived for the past nine years, an old friend is moving back in. Evey was my first friend in Cha-Cha City. We moved here at the same time, both starting tenure-track jobs, both in long-distance relationships. Her best friend from grad school was a reader of my blog, and she set us up. She thought we might like each other.
And oh, we did.
But after a few years, Evey got a job at her partner's institution. We kept in touch and managed to see each other almost once a year, but getting together was tricky: we lived a long day's drive apart, in places that neither of us had any other reason to visit. Then this spring Evey and her spouse got offered jobs at a university an hour away. Last week we had dinner with them; this week, she's having dinner with us.
This has all been a little disorienting. On the one hand, I'm sad to be moving just as she's returning. But we'll still be much closer than we've been for ages, and we'll each have reason to pass through the other's city multiple times a year. I never expected to have that kind of proximity again.
I've written before about how tough academia is on friendships: though other highly-educated professionals may move for work and may live far from family, it's rare for them to move to a place where they know literally no one--and rarer to do it past 30, and rarer still to keep doing it. Moreover, academics tend to move to communities that don't have a lot of transplants, where the natives have deep roots, and where it's hard to form friendships with people who aren't themselves transplants.
I hate that my first in-town best friend moved away, and that I'm now moving away from my second. I hate that one of my favorite colleagues left, and that I'm leaving two or three others. It took almost nine years to build the social circle I wanted here.
But maybe grumbling about all the friends I'm leaving--or who left me first--is the wrong way to think about it. Had I not moved to a random city where I knew no one, I'd never have met most of these people in the first place. And if I weren't moving to Cosimo's city and hadn't already been living there part-time, I wouldn't have the few burgeoning friendships I have there, or whatever other friendships I may later develop.
A few years ago everyone I knew was buzzing about this article on the difficulty of making new friends past a certain age. The argument is that at some point in our thirties we're all so busy, and have such well-established lives and routines, that even when we really hit it off with someone new it's hard to escalate to the kind of intimacy we might have developed in our twenties, when our lives were less structured.
The argument makes sense, and I'd be lying if I said there were no people I saw as missed friend opportunities--but that's always been true. More to the point, I'm a forty-year-old introvert who's never stopped developing close friendships, perhaps because the vagaries of the academic job market have forced me to it. And mostly I've made friends with other academics: other transplants, other people with shallow roots. When everyone lives hours from their closest friends, they're definitely still in the market for new ones.
In some ways, then, academia might be said to foster the building of new friendships well into adulthood. In addition to having very little control over where the job market sends us, we're constantly meeting interesting new people at conferences. And conferences are basically incubators for intense interpersonal connections. Like sleep-away camp or like a college dorm, conferences pluck us out of everyday life, deposit us into a closed and artificial environment, and leave us there, face to face, for 16 or more hours a day.
Every conference I come away having fallen a little in love with at least one new person--or having deepened and reaffirmed my existing love for two or three people whom I see only at conferences, but whom I inevitably wind up talking to late into the night, or over a long lunch or coffee break. And as at camp, intimacy comes fast.
So though I'm still mourning the people I'm leaving behind, I'm going to try to have a better attitude about academia and what it does to friendships.
After all: it's how I met all you lovelies, now isn't it?
Showing posts with label Conferencing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conferencing. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Insider-ish
After an extra-long stay on the west coast to celebrate my one and only brother's wedding, I'm finally returned and recovered from #shakeass15. This was my seventh SAA in nine years, and maybe it's time to give in and admit that, drama scholar or no, this really is my conference now.
This was the first year that I organized and ran a seminar of my own (a rather wee one, as it turned out, but with great papers and participants), and probably the second at which it seemed fully half of the seminars were run by friends, or at least friends-of-friends, or, anyway: people I know well enough to talk to for five minutes at the bar.
When I was at an earlier stage of my career, I think I longed for this moment as a sign that I'd "made" it, that I was some kind of an insider. And for at least a couple of hours on Thursday, it did feel that way: at the opening reception, after 10 hours of travel, not enough to eat, and (just possibly) more wine than I'd realized, I was possessed of the delusion that either I knew everyone or everyone knew me. This was a terrific feeling, and led to my crashing a lot of conversations: I'd see a knot of four or five people, recognize one of them, and decide that the whole group probably knew who I was and would be thrilled if I barged into their conversation. When the expected enthusiastic welcome wasn't forthcoming, I'd think, geez, those are some weird, uptight people--and move along to the next bunch.
As a strategy to overcome the social-awkwardness-that-reads-as-unfriendliness at academic conferences, this may not have been the worst approach: without the anxious, inhibiting voice in my head persuading me that I was the weird, rude one, I was free to be . . . well, a little weird and a little rude. But also charming and friendly! (I'm pretty sure!)
Looking back on the reception from the following day's luncheon, it was clear that I didn't know half the attendees. (Using a generous definition of "know," it's conceivable that I knew one-quarter.) And the people I don't know aren't just grad students or scholars emeriti: they're often people my own age, at my career stage, doing interesting and important work; we just haven't met yet.
This is, I think, the real sweet spot: being only two or three degrees of separation from everyone, but never feeling that one has reached the end or exhausted all the possible SAAs within any given SAA.
But no matter how many sub-conferences any conference contains, Ima try to crash every one of them.
This was the first year that I organized and ran a seminar of my own (a rather wee one, as it turned out, but with great papers and participants), and probably the second at which it seemed fully half of the seminars were run by friends, or at least friends-of-friends, or, anyway: people I know well enough to talk to for five minutes at the bar.
When I was at an earlier stage of my career, I think I longed for this moment as a sign that I'd "made" it, that I was some kind of an insider. And for at least a couple of hours on Thursday, it did feel that way: at the opening reception, after 10 hours of travel, not enough to eat, and (just possibly) more wine than I'd realized, I was possessed of the delusion that either I knew everyone or everyone knew me. This was a terrific feeling, and led to my crashing a lot of conversations: I'd see a knot of four or five people, recognize one of them, and decide that the whole group probably knew who I was and would be thrilled if I barged into their conversation. When the expected enthusiastic welcome wasn't forthcoming, I'd think, geez, those are some weird, uptight people--and move along to the next bunch.
As a strategy to overcome the social-awkwardness-that-reads-as-unfriendliness at academic conferences, this may not have been the worst approach: without the anxious, inhibiting voice in my head persuading me that I was the weird, rude one, I was free to be . . . well, a little weird and a little rude. But also charming and friendly! (I'm pretty sure!)
Looking back on the reception from the following day's luncheon, it was clear that I didn't know half the attendees. (Using a generous definition of "know," it's conceivable that I knew one-quarter.) And the people I don't know aren't just grad students or scholars emeriti: they're often people my own age, at my career stage, doing interesting and important work; we just haven't met yet.
This is, I think, the real sweet spot: being only two or three degrees of separation from everyone, but never feeling that one has reached the end or exhausted all the possible SAAs within any given SAA.
But no matter how many sub-conferences any conference contains, Ima try to crash every one of them.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Letters-to-the-editor idiocy knows no nation
I'm sure that many of my readers, like me, received as an extra punch to the gut the news that the plane shot down over Ukraine was carrying more than 100 HIV/AIDS researchers. This doesn't make the story worse, exactly--298 lives lost is a tragedy, whoever they are, and the geopolitical crisis doesn't care whether they're vacationers, bankers, or scholars. But it's a loss on top of those losses to think of how this affects an urgently important field of research.
(And I bet I'm not the only one who's occasionally looked around the plane en route to a conference and thought, "damn: if this goes down, there goes half of Donne studies.")
So I wasn't surprised, on my flight back to the States yesterday, to see that one of the letters to the editor of the Guardian was also thinking about the relationship of the MH17 crash to the future of scholarship. I was, however, TOTALLY surprised by what he considered the tragedy an occasion to opine on.
Here's the letter in its entirety:
Clearly, if there were no academic conferences, the public would be better off.
(And I bet I'm not the only one who's occasionally looked around the plane en route to a conference and thought, "damn: if this goes down, there goes half of Donne studies.")
So I wasn't surprised, on my flight back to the States yesterday, to see that one of the letters to the editor of the Guardian was also thinking about the relationship of the MH17 crash to the future of scholarship. I was, however, TOTALLY surprised by what he considered the tragedy an occasion to opine on.
Here's the letter in its entirety:
The overall loss of life in the Malaysia Airlines disaster (Report, 18 July) is the primary concern, but a separate issue is raised. Around 100 were scientists going to a conference in Australia. Is it not time to ask why such trips are necessary? The advent of large-screen TVs and rapid transmission of data and the spoken word mean it is no longer necessary to send thousands of people around the world at great expense and at major environmental cost. Now we have lost a very large number of people expert in the science of Aids. What cost will this be to those suffering from the disease?
Dr Simon Harris
Wrexham
Clearly, if there were no academic conferences, the public would be better off.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Younger than that now
I'm just back from #shakeass14--my fourth and final conference of the term, which is at least two too many--and as usual I'm filled with many feelings. Though I still don't quite feel that SAA is "my" conference (not being a drama scholar and all), it's the one where I feel most in touch with my corner of the profession, for good and for ill.
That's not so much about the work being presented, but about the size and the nature of the conference and to some degree its timing: it happens in April, after all the job market gossip is out. Even with its recent growth, the conference remains small enough to fit in one hotel and large enough that it seems everyone I know is there. Most importantly, it's a conference that remains welcoming to very junior people and those on the margins of the profession; its seminar format, where works-in-progress are precirculated and everyone gives feedback to everyone (grad students to very senior scholars and vice-versa) is a large part of this. SAA is kind of like Twitter: it's not that there's no hierarchy (or no jackassery), but it creates a space for conversations and friendships that set age, rank, and status aside.
For that reason, I was disappointed that the official conference made some missteps; not only did the programming skew toward older participants, but there were a number of unprofessional, self-indulgent, and/or ungenerous statements made by senior people speaking publicly at various podiums (I witnessed two and heard about two others). That still amounts to only a small proportion of the conference, but it's not a good tone to set. One person is an anomaly. Multiple people getting prime airtime feels like an endorsement.
But if the tone of the conference struck me as less welcoming to The Yoots than it might have been, I myself spent more time with grad students or recent PhDs than I have since I was one myself. This wasn't, like, a project on my part; there just happened to be a critical mass of interesting younger people around--some of whom I'd met at previous conferences or on social media while others were the friends, acquaintances, or grad students of my friends. And they were at the bar and I was at the bar and whether any of us now remembers our conversations clearly, it was still a good time.
Hanging out with fun people is its own reward, but for anyone concerned about the larger profession, talking to grad students and recent PhDs should also feel essential. Our juniors aren't just our future, but our present: the kind of work they're doing is a good index of what the discipline values (and this is true whether they're writing "safe" dissertations or balls-to-the-wall dissertations), and the forms of professionalization and pedagogical training they receive are also worth our knowing and understanding if we hope to hire them. The knowledge-transfer needs to work both ways.
I genuinely believe that most mid-career types want to know, or at least are open to knowing, their juniors. Some don't make much of an effort and others don't know how (whenever I feel slighted, I ask myself: is it possible this person is just deeply socially inept? usually the answer is yes), which is why conferences that foster conversations across rank are so important. But of course, there are scholars, at all career stages, who think the only people worth meeting are those senior to them. And those people suck.
The thing is, the profession is hard on everyone these days. Anyone hired in the past couple of decades either has his own scars or has seen up close and personal those of some dear friends. If you've gone through a hazing process yourself, I don't see how it's possible not to relate to those behind you--and to want to make it easier on them where you can. But as the culture of hazing teaches us, there are those who, once they've made it, buy into its logic, cling to whatever limited status they've achieved, and demand even more obeisance from their juniors than was demanded of them.
Luckily, at the SAA there's an easy way to exorcize such people from one's conference experience: just go to the dance. Those obsessed with status are generally not to be found playing air guitar.
That's not so much about the work being presented, but about the size and the nature of the conference and to some degree its timing: it happens in April, after all the job market gossip is out. Even with its recent growth, the conference remains small enough to fit in one hotel and large enough that it seems everyone I know is there. Most importantly, it's a conference that remains welcoming to very junior people and those on the margins of the profession; its seminar format, where works-in-progress are precirculated and everyone gives feedback to everyone (grad students to very senior scholars and vice-versa) is a large part of this. SAA is kind of like Twitter: it's not that there's no hierarchy (or no jackassery), but it creates a space for conversations and friendships that set age, rank, and status aside.
For that reason, I was disappointed that the official conference made some missteps; not only did the programming skew toward older participants, but there were a number of unprofessional, self-indulgent, and/or ungenerous statements made by senior people speaking publicly at various podiums (I witnessed two and heard about two others). That still amounts to only a small proportion of the conference, but it's not a good tone to set. One person is an anomaly. Multiple people getting prime airtime feels like an endorsement.
But if the tone of the conference struck me as less welcoming to The Yoots than it might have been, I myself spent more time with grad students or recent PhDs than I have since I was one myself. This wasn't, like, a project on my part; there just happened to be a critical mass of interesting younger people around--some of whom I'd met at previous conferences or on social media while others were the friends, acquaintances, or grad students of my friends. And they were at the bar and I was at the bar and whether any of us now remembers our conversations clearly, it was still a good time.
Hanging out with fun people is its own reward, but for anyone concerned about the larger profession, talking to grad students and recent PhDs should also feel essential. Our juniors aren't just our future, but our present: the kind of work they're doing is a good index of what the discipline values (and this is true whether they're writing "safe" dissertations or balls-to-the-wall dissertations), and the forms of professionalization and pedagogical training they receive are also worth our knowing and understanding if we hope to hire them. The knowledge-transfer needs to work both ways.
I genuinely believe that most mid-career types want to know, or at least are open to knowing, their juniors. Some don't make much of an effort and others don't know how (whenever I feel slighted, I ask myself: is it possible this person is just deeply socially inept? usually the answer is yes), which is why conferences that foster conversations across rank are so important. But of course, there are scholars, at all career stages, who think the only people worth meeting are those senior to them. And those people suck.
The thing is, the profession is hard on everyone these days. Anyone hired in the past couple of decades either has his own scars or has seen up close and personal those of some dear friends. If you've gone through a hazing process yourself, I don't see how it's possible not to relate to those behind you--and to want to make it easier on them where you can. But as the culture of hazing teaches us, there are those who, once they've made it, buy into its logic, cling to whatever limited status they've achieved, and demand even more obeisance from their juniors than was demanded of them.
Luckily, at the SAA there's an easy way to exorcize such people from one's conference experience: just go to the dance. Those obsessed with status are generally not to be found playing air guitar.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Bucket of nouns
I'm just back from the Renaissance Society of America's annual conference, and I'm here to tell you that I am OVER the question & answer session as it transpires after the typical conference panel.
Now, a round-table discussion is a different beast, as are single-presenter talks before a specialized audience; in those cases, the Q&A is often a great opportunity to hear someone expand on her work or for the group to brainstorm together. But the average conference Q&A involves what seems to be an invisible bucket of nouns passed around the audience. Each person sticks her hand in, pulls out a random noun, and builds a question around it.
The wind-up will vary in length and coherence, but the question usually amounts to, "I'm wondering if you can say anything about how your research engages with [RANDOM NOUN]."
You can make your own set and play at home, but in my field the cards might include:
Sometimes the nouns are extremely specialized and sometimes they're extremely broad, but the common feature is that they come from left field and may be of interest to literally no one but the person doing the asking. In the most egregious cases, the questioner will grab a whole fistful of nouns and string them together--not always with any logical connection and not always phrased in the form of a question--followed by, "anyway, I'd love to hear what you think about that."
Four times out of five, I hate sitting through someone else's Q&A session. Nine times out of ten, I hate participating in one as a presenter. Partly this is because I don't process information well aurally, so though I've had some very successful Q&A sessions, they still felt like artificial exercises. Rarely have I actually had any new thoughts in the process of the session; I've just succeeded in sounding smart because the questions gave me the chance to explain the background or larger context of my project or to rehearse material from the longer version. I give potted answers, basically, even if they don't sound that way and weren't prepared in advance.
Increasingly, these days, when someone heaves a bucket-of-nouns question at me, I just say, "to be honest, I haven't thought about my work in connection with X." Or "Well, I haven't read that in a long time, so I shouldn't pretend to know more than I do." Sometimes I'll give a version of, "I'm not answering that question" four or five times in a single Q&A.
I value real questions and real feedback about my work, and I love talking with audience members about it afterwards. But even the best questions are not best asked or answered in a relatively high-pressure situation--and in my experience, the best questions account for maybe 10% of the questions one gets asked.
The rest? Bucket of nouns.
Now, a round-table discussion is a different beast, as are single-presenter talks before a specialized audience; in those cases, the Q&A is often a great opportunity to hear someone expand on her work or for the group to brainstorm together. But the average conference Q&A involves what seems to be an invisible bucket of nouns passed around the audience. Each person sticks her hand in, pulls out a random noun, and builds a question around it.
The wind-up will vary in length and coherence, but the question usually amounts to, "I'm wondering if you can say anything about how your research engages with [RANDOM NOUN]."
You can make your own set and play at home, but in my field the cards might include:
Luther
Deleuze & Guattari
The lyric
Ecocriticism
The Bishops War
Oral culture
Hobbes
Tasso
City comedy
Political theology
Book 2 of The Faerie Queene
Sometimes the nouns are extremely specialized and sometimes they're extremely broad, but the common feature is that they come from left field and may be of interest to literally no one but the person doing the asking. In the most egregious cases, the questioner will grab a whole fistful of nouns and string them together--not always with any logical connection and not always phrased in the form of a question--followed by, "anyway, I'd love to hear what you think about that."
Four times out of five, I hate sitting through someone else's Q&A session. Nine times out of ten, I hate participating in one as a presenter. Partly this is because I don't process information well aurally, so though I've had some very successful Q&A sessions, they still felt like artificial exercises. Rarely have I actually had any new thoughts in the process of the session; I've just succeeded in sounding smart because the questions gave me the chance to explain the background or larger context of my project or to rehearse material from the longer version. I give potted answers, basically, even if they don't sound that way and weren't prepared in advance.
Increasingly, these days, when someone heaves a bucket-of-nouns question at me, I just say, "to be honest, I haven't thought about my work in connection with X." Or "Well, I haven't read that in a long time, so I shouldn't pretend to know more than I do." Sometimes I'll give a version of, "I'm not answering that question" four or five times in a single Q&A.
I value real questions and real feedback about my work, and I love talking with audience members about it afterwards. But even the best questions are not best asked or answered in a relatively high-pressure situation--and in my experience, the best questions account for maybe 10% of the questions one gets asked.
The rest? Bucket of nouns.
Monday, April 01, 2013
This conference hangover might be terminal
I spent last weekend in Toronto at the conference that's finally owning the name many of us have long applied to it--but now I'm back, and I'm crashing hard.
The post-conference hangover (which is not to be confused with an actual hangover, though that also goes with the territory) is a well-known occupational hazard; to judge by my Facebook and Twitter feeds, lots of my fellow conferees are also suffering. I myself spent most of last night in tears for no reason, and it was only in the light of day that I recognized the symptoms. It's hard to jump back into workaday life after a weekend away, and it's particularly hard after three or four days of constant intellectual and social stimulation; I'm always a bit glum and my world seems pokey and disappointing for a couple of days after I return from a conference.
This time, though, I'm not just crashing from a conference high; I'm also processing the conference lows. As the association president said at her luncheon address, the SAA is, for many scholars, their "hometown": the place where they feel most at ease, most fully understood, and most warmly welcomed. It's a lovely description of why professional conferences matter, but it implies (as she went on to say) that the other places we spend our working lives are not as welcoming.
Here's some of what I heard about those other places, in the course of the conference:
Sure, I've heard such stories for years. And everyone I know who's actually left the profession has found happy, fulfilling work (in many cases, they're happier than those who hung on). But in a year in which I achieved both tenure and a book contract, such stories feel paradoxically more personal. This is really my profession now. And it's not getting better.
When I was in grad school and on the market, I was angry about the shape of the profession--but though it felt like my problem (I was one of the exploited, one of those who might never get a tenure-track job), it wasn't really: the crisis was the responsibility of my seniors, who, if they hadn't created it, were at least ignoring and perpetuating it.
I remember asking my union organizer why the faculty were so opposed to unionization, or why they seemed to believe--in the absence of all evidence--that everyone who worked hard and kept her head down would get a job. She said that maybe it was too hard for the faculty to acknowledge that the system was broken, that it wasn't a real meritocracy, and that they themselves didn't have the power to help or protect us.
That explanation struck me with the force of real truth, and it still does now that I'm one of them. We own this shitty system. We didn't break it, but we bought it.
So while I'm sure my conference stupor will lift in a day or two, I hope it's replaced by something less like paralysis and more like outrage.
The post-conference hangover (which is not to be confused with an actual hangover, though that also goes with the territory) is a well-known occupational hazard; to judge by my Facebook and Twitter feeds, lots of my fellow conferees are also suffering. I myself spent most of last night in tears for no reason, and it was only in the light of day that I recognized the symptoms. It's hard to jump back into workaday life after a weekend away, and it's particularly hard after three or four days of constant intellectual and social stimulation; I'm always a bit glum and my world seems pokey and disappointing for a couple of days after I return from a conference.
This time, though, I'm not just crashing from a conference high; I'm also processing the conference lows. As the association president said at her luncheon address, the SAA is, for many scholars, their "hometown": the place where they feel most at ease, most fully understood, and most warmly welcomed. It's a lovely description of why professional conferences matter, but it implies (as she went on to say) that the other places we spend our working lives are not as welcoming.
Here's some of what I heard about those other places, in the course of the conference:
-Two of my friends were denied tenure in jaw-droppingly egregious ways;
-Another is in a department that may be dissolved;
-Three more are at institutions that are imploding (one of which may actually go under);
-Other friends and acquaintances spent yet another year fruitlessly searching for tenure-track jobs;
-Still others--like me--have perfectly nice jobs that involve major personal and domestic sacrifices.
Sure, I've heard such stories for years. And everyone I know who's actually left the profession has found happy, fulfilling work (in many cases, they're happier than those who hung on). But in a year in which I achieved both tenure and a book contract, such stories feel paradoxically more personal. This is really my profession now. And it's not getting better.
When I was in grad school and on the market, I was angry about the shape of the profession--but though it felt like my problem (I was one of the exploited, one of those who might never get a tenure-track job), it wasn't really: the crisis was the responsibility of my seniors, who, if they hadn't created it, were at least ignoring and perpetuating it.
I remember asking my union organizer why the faculty were so opposed to unionization, or why they seemed to believe--in the absence of all evidence--that everyone who worked hard and kept her head down would get a job. She said that maybe it was too hard for the faculty to acknowledge that the system was broken, that it wasn't a real meritocracy, and that they themselves didn't have the power to help or protect us.
That explanation struck me with the force of real truth, and it still does now that I'm one of them. We own this shitty system. We didn't break it, but we bought it.
So while I'm sure my conference stupor will lift in a day or two, I hope it's replaced by something less like paralysis and more like outrage.
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
MLA 2013
I've now returned from MLA and recovered from MLA, and I'm here to tell you that I ain't as young as I used to be. Two years ago, I wrote that whereas MLA had once been a whirl of excitement and novelty, an opportunity to figure out my place in the profession, it's now, increasingly, about my obligations to the profession. Since I was on a hiring committee this year, I was literally obliged to go and to sit in a hotel suite for fourteen interviews over two days--but when I speak of my professional obligations I mean something more expansive than that task, as well as something a bit more rewarding than "fourteen interviews over two days" might suggest.
I'll start with the interviews. The days were indeed long, and they left me more fatigued at the end than I'd expected--but not only is it genuinely fun to meet talented young scholars (and to learn about a field totally outside my own), I also appreciated the opportunity to think about how the conditions of those interviews reflect on us as a department and a profession. I won't claim that our team provided a perfect interview experience--two of us were on a hiring committee for the first time and the third was only doing it for the second--and small things did go awry, especially on the first day. Room service arrived with coffee in the middle of one interview; hotel phones and cell phones went off in the middle of others; there were minor mishaps to do with elevators and room numbers and missed calls.
But I think we were all aware of how stressful the interview experience is for candidates and how disproportionately horrible even a mediocre one can feel; we've all had dispiriting interviews, or interviews where the committee seemed bored or hostile, or where small rudenesses--like not knowing what to do with a candidate's coat or not having a clean cup in which to offer her water--came to feel emblematic of such boredom or hostility. So we tried to be foresighted about a candidate's needs, and we also worked hard to be warm and affirmative throughout by smiling, nodding, asking follow-up questions, and otherwise communicating our engagement. Yeah, it's a long day, and no, not everyone is equally compelling. But though we may not in that moment be able to change the hiring practices of academia, we can make a job candidate feel valued and worth listening to.
(And for any grad students or recent PhDs who may be reading: most of the little stuff really doesn't matter. We don't care if you wear a skirt and nice sweater rather than a suit. We don't care if you flub one question. Having the phone ring or room service arrive while you're talking doesn't actually detract from your awesomeness if we think you're awesome. It's okay to fumble around a bit if you eventually arrive at a strong answer. And I can think of only one candidate for whom we really needed the whole interview to make a judgment call; in every other case, the strongest and weakest candidates were apparent very quickly. On the other hand, interviews really do show things that aren't apparent on paper.)
When I wasn't in an interview suite, I was eating or drinking or otherwise hanging out. I did meet with my editor and I did make it to a couple of panels, but most of what I did amounted to socializing: at coffee shops, bars, restaurants, or receptions; in hotel lobbies, at the book exhibit, on the elevator, or walking the endless mall that connected the conference center to the various hotels. Some of the people I was most thrilled to see I chatted with for just five minutes, and even those with whom I spent a full hour or two I wished I'd had more time with.
I also spent a decent amount of time hanging out with grad students or contingent faculty friends who were interviewing, and I tried to buy every single one of them a drink. Maybe next year I'll expand this policy to any random younger person I see at the bar who seems in need of bourbon. One of the best things about blogging and social media are the friendships I've developed with people outside my immediate age/field cohort, but as I get more remote from my own grad student and contingent faculty days, I worry about losing touch with what the profession looks like from that perspective. And lacking my own doctoral students, I may also have a lot of frustrated older-sister energy to expend. (In other words: grad students! Hit me up for a drink and tell me about your dissertation.)
Many people talk about conferences as an opportunity to rejuvenate and reconnect with their discipline and their subfield: it's what keeps them engaged and up-to-date. Usually this statement is understood to refer to the scholarly work of the conference, but I think it's equally true for the social work of a conference. I need to spend a certain amount of time in bars with friends and acquaintances to know what's really going on with them and with the profession. I guess you could call this gossip, and some of it is--who got tenure or a book contract, who moved jobs, what horrible administrative initiative is happening where--but it's also a vital way of keeping in touch with the field in all its facets.
Conferences take more out of me than they used to, when all I was doing was making new friends and figuring out who I was. But they're equally as important--which is why I'm still at the damn bar at one in the morning, and in an interview suite at ten.
I'll start with the interviews. The days were indeed long, and they left me more fatigued at the end than I'd expected--but not only is it genuinely fun to meet talented young scholars (and to learn about a field totally outside my own), I also appreciated the opportunity to think about how the conditions of those interviews reflect on us as a department and a profession. I won't claim that our team provided a perfect interview experience--two of us were on a hiring committee for the first time and the third was only doing it for the second--and small things did go awry, especially on the first day. Room service arrived with coffee in the middle of one interview; hotel phones and cell phones went off in the middle of others; there were minor mishaps to do with elevators and room numbers and missed calls.
But I think we were all aware of how stressful the interview experience is for candidates and how disproportionately horrible even a mediocre one can feel; we've all had dispiriting interviews, or interviews where the committee seemed bored or hostile, or where small rudenesses--like not knowing what to do with a candidate's coat or not having a clean cup in which to offer her water--came to feel emblematic of such boredom or hostility. So we tried to be foresighted about a candidate's needs, and we also worked hard to be warm and affirmative throughout by smiling, nodding, asking follow-up questions, and otherwise communicating our engagement. Yeah, it's a long day, and no, not everyone is equally compelling. But though we may not in that moment be able to change the hiring practices of academia, we can make a job candidate feel valued and worth listening to.
(And for any grad students or recent PhDs who may be reading: most of the little stuff really doesn't matter. We don't care if you wear a skirt and nice sweater rather than a suit. We don't care if you flub one question. Having the phone ring or room service arrive while you're talking doesn't actually detract from your awesomeness if we think you're awesome. It's okay to fumble around a bit if you eventually arrive at a strong answer. And I can think of only one candidate for whom we really needed the whole interview to make a judgment call; in every other case, the strongest and weakest candidates were apparent very quickly. On the other hand, interviews really do show things that aren't apparent on paper.)
When I wasn't in an interview suite, I was eating or drinking or otherwise hanging out. I did meet with my editor and I did make it to a couple of panels, but most of what I did amounted to socializing: at coffee shops, bars, restaurants, or receptions; in hotel lobbies, at the book exhibit, on the elevator, or walking the endless mall that connected the conference center to the various hotels. Some of the people I was most thrilled to see I chatted with for just five minutes, and even those with whom I spent a full hour or two I wished I'd had more time with.
I also spent a decent amount of time hanging out with grad students or contingent faculty friends who were interviewing, and I tried to buy every single one of them a drink. Maybe next year I'll expand this policy to any random younger person I see at the bar who seems in need of bourbon. One of the best things about blogging and social media are the friendships I've developed with people outside my immediate age/field cohort, but as I get more remote from my own grad student and contingent faculty days, I worry about losing touch with what the profession looks like from that perspective. And lacking my own doctoral students, I may also have a lot of frustrated older-sister energy to expend. (In other words: grad students! Hit me up for a drink and tell me about your dissertation.)
Many people talk about conferences as an opportunity to rejuvenate and reconnect with their discipline and their subfield: it's what keeps them engaged and up-to-date. Usually this statement is understood to refer to the scholarly work of the conference, but I think it's equally true for the social work of a conference. I need to spend a certain amount of time in bars with friends and acquaintances to know what's really going on with them and with the profession. I guess you could call this gossip, and some of it is--who got tenure or a book contract, who moved jobs, what horrible administrative initiative is happening where--but it's also a vital way of keeping in touch with the field in all its facets.
Conferences take more out of me than they used to, when all I was doing was making new friends and figuring out who I was. But they're equally as important--which is why I'm still at the damn bar at one in the morning, and in an interview suite at ten.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Lee, Blanford, Ludlow, Charlton & Natick
I've driven virtually the entire length of the Mass Pike four times in the past eight days--and given that this year's MLA is in Boston, I'll be driving it TWICE MORE over the next five weeks.
Pro: next time, this damn semester will be over.
Con: next time, there will not be eight pies awaiting me (or a freezer full of leftovers returning with me).
Pro: I'll be staying in a swanky hotel, right in downtown Boston.
Con: I'll be spending almost two full days in a hotel room, conducting interviews.
Pro: So many friends will be there--bloggy, grad schooly, and otherwise. And I really do love MLA.
Con: I hate the new MLA dates almost as much as I love MLA.
Pro: Unlike most conferences I attend, this one is fully paid for.
Con: Boston in January. Who thought that was a good idea?
Eh. I'm sure I'll be in a better mood come January. Or at least after I've had more pie.
Pro: next time, this damn semester will be over.
Con: next time, there will not be eight pies awaiting me (or a freezer full of leftovers returning with me).
Pro: I'll be staying in a swanky hotel, right in downtown Boston.
Con: I'll be spending almost two full days in a hotel room, conducting interviews.
Pro: So many friends will be there--bloggy, grad schooly, and otherwise. And I really do love MLA.
Con: I hate the new MLA dates almost as much as I love MLA.
Pro: Unlike most conferences I attend, this one is fully paid for.
Con: Boston in January. Who thought that was a good idea?
Eh. I'm sure I'll be in a better mood come January. Or at least after I've had more pie.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Finding mentors
In the comments to my last post, a grad student, Canuck Down South, asked how I managed to make friends and find mentors among senior scholars. It's a good question, and something I think is important for grad students and junior faculty to start working on as early as possible.
This is partly because it takes time and it's nothing you can force. I'm not a model of success, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about from the moment I got this job: I either already knew or vaguely intuited that, with the exception of my advisor, my recommenders going forward should absolutely not be faculty from my graduate institution. At the same time, there was no one at RU who would be appropriate, since I didn't have in-field senior colleagues. So, if you can't or shouldn't lean on your grad school profs or your colleagues at your first job, where do you turn?
Unless you're already publishing work that gets you unsolicited fan mail, I think the only answer for a junior scholar is conferences, professional societies, or anywhere else you meet people in person (for example, if there's a regional colloquium or working group that draws scholars from institutions other than your own). And your best bets at an early stage are the smaller venues: special one-off conferences, where you might actually get to talk at some length with people who are vastly your seniors; small societies dedicated to a specialized aspect of your research; or conferences that involve workshops or seminars rather than formal paper presentations.
And then. . . you present good work and you seize any opportunity that presents itself. If you see people whose work you admire, introduce yourself and tell them so. Sometimes--not always, not even most the time--they'll ask you about yours. And for goodness sakes, if someone comes up to you after a paper and wants to talk to you about it, keep talking. If you chat with someone for more than a few minutes, and especially if they offer you something in the way of real advice (even if it's not actually immediately useful or relevant), drop them an email after the conference saying how nice it was to meet them and how much you appreciate their suggestions. Most of these people, too, will not turn out to be actual mentors, but as I wrote a number of years back, the point of networking is that you never know.
Gradually, you'll start to know people. And sooner or later, someone will explicitly tell you that they'd love to read your work, or keep in touch about the results of your research. You'll be flattered, but you may not believe them. Believe them. Take them up on it.
Because here's the secret: most established scholars really want to know what younger people are working on, and where their corner of the discipline is headed. Many fear, at least a tiny bit, losing their finger on the pulse of what's happening. This is especially true for scholars who aren't teaching at doctoral institutions, or who teach at second- or third-tier ones. We all need mentors. But many people also want mentees: they're an additional way to stay engaged, an opportunity to give back to the profession--and, yes, a means of extending their own scholarly influence.
When it comes right down to asking for a letter of reference--or seeing whether someone would read an article draft or whatever--there's still usually a point where you just have to ask. And for me, anyway, the cold ask has never gotten easier: even when I'm asking for a letter from someone who's written letters for me in the past, it still takes days or weeks of avoidance before I'll actually send that email. But if you've laid the right groundwork, and the other person is someone who's been sincerely supportive of and enthusiastic about your work, they won't mind. After all: it's their profession, too.
*
Wise and worldy readers, what additional advice would you give?
This is partly because it takes time and it's nothing you can force. I'm not a model of success, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about from the moment I got this job: I either already knew or vaguely intuited that, with the exception of my advisor, my recommenders going forward should absolutely not be faculty from my graduate institution. At the same time, there was no one at RU who would be appropriate, since I didn't have in-field senior colleagues. So, if you can't or shouldn't lean on your grad school profs or your colleagues at your first job, where do you turn?
Unless you're already publishing work that gets you unsolicited fan mail, I think the only answer for a junior scholar is conferences, professional societies, or anywhere else you meet people in person (for example, if there's a regional colloquium or working group that draws scholars from institutions other than your own). And your best bets at an early stage are the smaller venues: special one-off conferences, where you might actually get to talk at some length with people who are vastly your seniors; small societies dedicated to a specialized aspect of your research; or conferences that involve workshops or seminars rather than formal paper presentations.
And then. . . you present good work and you seize any opportunity that presents itself. If you see people whose work you admire, introduce yourself and tell them so. Sometimes--not always, not even most the time--they'll ask you about yours. And for goodness sakes, if someone comes up to you after a paper and wants to talk to you about it, keep talking. If you chat with someone for more than a few minutes, and especially if they offer you something in the way of real advice (even if it's not actually immediately useful or relevant), drop them an email after the conference saying how nice it was to meet them and how much you appreciate their suggestions. Most of these people, too, will not turn out to be actual mentors, but as I wrote a number of years back, the point of networking is that you never know.
Gradually, you'll start to know people. And sooner or later, someone will explicitly tell you that they'd love to read your work, or keep in touch about the results of your research. You'll be flattered, but you may not believe them. Believe them. Take them up on it.
Because here's the secret: most established scholars really want to know what younger people are working on, and where their corner of the discipline is headed. Many fear, at least a tiny bit, losing their finger on the pulse of what's happening. This is especially true for scholars who aren't teaching at doctoral institutions, or who teach at second- or third-tier ones. We all need mentors. But many people also want mentees: they're an additional way to stay engaged, an opportunity to give back to the profession--and, yes, a means of extending their own scholarly influence.
When it comes right down to asking for a letter of reference--or seeing whether someone would read an article draft or whatever--there's still usually a point where you just have to ask. And for me, anyway, the cold ask has never gotten easier: even when I'm asking for a letter from someone who's written letters for me in the past, it still takes days or weeks of avoidance before I'll actually send that email. But if you've laid the right groundwork, and the other person is someone who's been sincerely supportive of and enthusiastic about your work, they won't mind. After all: it's their profession, too.
*
Wise and worldy readers, what additional advice would you give?
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Conference-going on the eve of tenure
This year I went to both RSA and SAA, which I vow never to do again--or at least not when they're only two weeks apart. Yes, they were both in great cities, and yes, I saw people I love (and made useful new connections), and I heard great papers and ate & drank well, and I got to trot around in some pretty clothes. And this year I even had Twitter, which definitely beats a blog as a vehicle for catapulting conference observations and irritations into the internet. But it was exhausting.
What I love about conferences is their energy and their serendipity, and this applies as much to the social realm as to the intellectual. But as I get older there's less serendipity and I have less energy. My first year or two after getting the degree, seemingly every conference dinner involved between ten and fourteen people. This was because I'd plan to have dinner with a couple of friends, and they'd each invite someone else along, and those people would already have promised a few friends to dine with them--and we were all so young and so thrilled to be getting to know more people in the profession that OF COURSE everyone was welcome! We'd all get sushi together! And we'd have to wait 45 minutes for enough tables, drinking and gabbing throughout, and by dinner's end we'd all have promised to attend each others' panels (even the ones at 8.30 a.m. the next morning), and we'd leave the conference knowing another dozen people well enough to call friends.
Now, however, I know so many people that I often don't bother to make plans at all. It's impossible to prioritize, for one thing, so unless there's someone I haven't seen in a long while and have specifically been looking forward to seeing, I'm content to let chance do the planning and just see who I run into at the right moment (or who I turn out to be most excited to see, when I see him or her). And I'm not interested in groups larger than six: I want to talk to the people I'm with and I don't want to waste time trying to figure out where to go, or trying to get a table. Everyone else I figure I'll see at the bar.
The bar, too, is a problem: I may still be there every night until the lights go up, but I can't drink (or more to the point, I can't recover from a hangover) like I used to, and it's getting so even the drinking feels necessary, feels like social work: I have to stay there until I've made the rounds and talked to everybody I know, and that means I keep drinking even if I'd be better off in bed.
The other problem with knowing so many people is that I have to consciously try to meet new ones--especially new ones who are not already friends of friends, and especially grad students. It's easy to get lazy and to forget that having any kind of reputation and any kind of stature entails professional and social obligations. My position in the profession isn't a glorious one, but it's secure enough that my opinion actually does matter to a few people, and it's secure enough that I sometimes get read as slighting someone or being high-handed when really I'm just being a moron.
This happened at one of my past two conferences. After one panel a scholar, basically of my own generation, but with an acclaimed first book and an extremely fancy second job, came over to where I was standing chatting with a mutual friend.
I'd been looking forward to an opportunity to meet him, so I immediately stuck out my hand. "Oh!" I said. "We haven't met. I'm Flavia Fescue." And I may have added something about admiring his work.
"Actually," he said, "we have met. At Conference X last year."
"No," I insisted, smiling. "I'm sure we haven't."
He repeated his certitude, I repeated mine--and then he produced a whole conversation we'd apparently had. Based on its specifics, it had to be true, but I had no memory of it. And because I couldn't very well say, "wait, was this at a bar? maybe I was drunk?" instead I said, "oh, huh. I guess we have met."
Someone else came over then, and the scholar drifted away, awkwardly, and I realized that somehow I--who felt like the nobody--had come off as the self-absorbed jackass who couldn't be bothered to remember a person like him.
*
I'm sure I'll always enjoy conferences, but I expect they'll continue to be less purely fun than they were in those few first years. We have less to prove, professionally, and more to distract us: we have to run back to our hotel rooms to deal with departmental crises by email, or to nurse an infant, or to grade papers or work on grant applications. And if we're good members of the profession, as I hope to be, a lot more energy will be expended just trying to stay current: meeting people younger than ourselves, taking an interest in their work, and offering what advice and assistance we can.
Keeping up takes work; it would be easier if conferences were only about hanging out with one's friends for three days straight. But if what I like best about conferences is their energy and their serendipity, I guess it's well not to get too comfortable, to take it too easy, or to stick with the people and the things already known.
What I love about conferences is their energy and their serendipity, and this applies as much to the social realm as to the intellectual. But as I get older there's less serendipity and I have less energy. My first year or two after getting the degree, seemingly every conference dinner involved between ten and fourteen people. This was because I'd plan to have dinner with a couple of friends, and they'd each invite someone else along, and those people would already have promised a few friends to dine with them--and we were all so young and so thrilled to be getting to know more people in the profession that OF COURSE everyone was welcome! We'd all get sushi together! And we'd have to wait 45 minutes for enough tables, drinking and gabbing throughout, and by dinner's end we'd all have promised to attend each others' panels (even the ones at 8.30 a.m. the next morning), and we'd leave the conference knowing another dozen people well enough to call friends.
Now, however, I know so many people that I often don't bother to make plans at all. It's impossible to prioritize, for one thing, so unless there's someone I haven't seen in a long while and have specifically been looking forward to seeing, I'm content to let chance do the planning and just see who I run into at the right moment (or who I turn out to be most excited to see, when I see him or her). And I'm not interested in groups larger than six: I want to talk to the people I'm with and I don't want to waste time trying to figure out where to go, or trying to get a table. Everyone else I figure I'll see at the bar.
The bar, too, is a problem: I may still be there every night until the lights go up, but I can't drink (or more to the point, I can't recover from a hangover) like I used to, and it's getting so even the drinking feels necessary, feels like social work: I have to stay there until I've made the rounds and talked to everybody I know, and that means I keep drinking even if I'd be better off in bed.
The other problem with knowing so many people is that I have to consciously try to meet new ones--especially new ones who are not already friends of friends, and especially grad students. It's easy to get lazy and to forget that having any kind of reputation and any kind of stature entails professional and social obligations. My position in the profession isn't a glorious one, but it's secure enough that my opinion actually does matter to a few people, and it's secure enough that I sometimes get read as slighting someone or being high-handed when really I'm just being a moron.
This happened at one of my past two conferences. After one panel a scholar, basically of my own generation, but with an acclaimed first book and an extremely fancy second job, came over to where I was standing chatting with a mutual friend.
I'd been looking forward to an opportunity to meet him, so I immediately stuck out my hand. "Oh!" I said. "We haven't met. I'm Flavia Fescue." And I may have added something about admiring his work.
"Actually," he said, "we have met. At Conference X last year."
"No," I insisted, smiling. "I'm sure we haven't."
He repeated his certitude, I repeated mine--and then he produced a whole conversation we'd apparently had. Based on its specifics, it had to be true, but I had no memory of it. And because I couldn't very well say, "wait, was this at a bar? maybe I was drunk?" instead I said, "oh, huh. I guess we have met."
Someone else came over then, and the scholar drifted away, awkwardly, and I realized that somehow I--who felt like the nobody--had come off as the self-absorbed jackass who couldn't be bothered to remember a person like him.
*
I'm sure I'll always enjoy conferences, but I expect they'll continue to be less purely fun than they were in those few first years. We have less to prove, professionally, and more to distract us: we have to run back to our hotel rooms to deal with departmental crises by email, or to nurse an infant, or to grade papers or work on grant applications. And if we're good members of the profession, as I hope to be, a lot more energy will be expended just trying to stay current: meeting people younger than ourselves, taking an interest in their work, and offering what advice and assistance we can.
Keeping up takes work; it would be easier if conferences were only about hanging out with one's friends for three days straight. But if what I like best about conferences is their energy and their serendipity, I guess it's well not to get too comfortable, to take it too easy, or to stick with the people and the things already known.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
SAA: Day Three
My last day of SAA was a long one--9 a.m. to 1 a.m.--and not having a room to return to for some midday recharging was hard. I have an unusually long battery life for an introvert (and sitting in panels is less taxing than having to be continually socially on), but I still had to disappear myself to a distant café for a couple of hours to regroup.
Still, it was excellently eventful. I saw one panel descend into shouted polemic (it began well, and I'm at least half in sympathy with the substance of the polemic, but after a number of detours into Crazy Town and someone yelling something about boa constrictors, I had to leave). But I also saw Cosimo give a great paper, on what may have been the best panel of the conference, to a packed room. In between whiles I drank a lot of coffee, gabbed with everyone who was around, and bought far too many books; I feel an obscure imperative to buy all my friends' books, even those barely tangential to my own research, and though I buy them as cheaply as possible it still makes for heavy carry-on luggage for the return.
The least successful part of the day and indeed of the conference involved the hotel bar. At every SAA I've attended, everyone winds up in the hotel bar at the end of the night; it's the place everyone promises to see everyone else, and it's not unusual for 70 of the 700 conference-goers to still be there at last call. However, the Hyatt bar had a very loud cover band that was also very, very bad. And according to the hotel's liquor license, no one could take drinks outside of the bar itself, even to the lounge-y seating area nearby. And while I had no wish to quarrel with the terms of the liquor license or with the officious young man who was just doing his job in shooing my friends and their drinks over the threshold back into the bar, I have a firm belief that I know best--and that tackiness, inefficiency, and social stupidity are my own personal job to eliminate.
So I marched up to the officious young man and told him how awful his bar was and how much business he was losing. For reasons that are unclear to me, he seemed to care deeply about my opinions while being totally unwilling to accept that the bar could drive anyone away.
"Actually, this band is a big draw. People come here for this. It's the only bar with live music on the Eastside. People drive in from Seattle!"
Maybe, I said. But they have bad taste.
"This isn't bad music! I mean, it's not like they're playing Journey, or Bon Jovi."
A younger (prettier, blonder) friend joined me. "No," she said. "It's awful. "This drink? Is the only one I'm paying for. Normally I'd order three or four. And see all those people? They would, too."
The two of us and the hotel employee went around and around about the badness of the band for some 10 minutes before he reminded me of something I'd forgotten: the opulent steakhouse at the top of the hotel had a bar. And great views.
"It's a little. . . older." He said. "A quieter crowd, kinda stuffy? But you and your friends might like it."
Ignoring the implied insult, we seized the suggestion, grabbed a few more friends, and jumped in the elevator.
The doors opened to a bar crammed full of people not noticeably older or cooler than the people downstairs. And it was loud, mainly because there was a guy at the piano shouting Billy Joel's "Piano Man" into a microphone.
Maybe I swore or maybe the half dozen of us in our conference-y clothes just looked out of place, but a woman at the bar sneered and told us what a legend the singer was, and how everyone in the joint was there to hear him. "You're from out of town, right?" She said. "well where do you think is better than this? you think Seattle is better than this?"
It's possible that I lost it. It's possible that I told her how many places in the world were better than that particular patch of real estate and that pathetic excuse for a nightlife scene. But whatever angry tirade I may or may not have uttered, I stalked back to the elevators, trailing astonished colleagues.
And then? And then we did what I have never done: we went to the Malone Society Dance. And the dark hotel ballroom with its overpriced drinks and wedding-D.J.-music-stylings (Erasure, Madonna, the B-52s, and, yes, Journey) was still so very much better than the hotel bar.
I might have wound up on the dancefloor. I might even have sung every word to "Living on a Prayer." But you'd have to have been there to confirm it.
Still, it was excellently eventful. I saw one panel descend into shouted polemic (it began well, and I'm at least half in sympathy with the substance of the polemic, but after a number of detours into Crazy Town and someone yelling something about boa constrictors, I had to leave). But I also saw Cosimo give a great paper, on what may have been the best panel of the conference, to a packed room. In between whiles I drank a lot of coffee, gabbed with everyone who was around, and bought far too many books; I feel an obscure imperative to buy all my friends' books, even those barely tangential to my own research, and though I buy them as cheaply as possible it still makes for heavy carry-on luggage for the return.
The least successful part of the day and indeed of the conference involved the hotel bar. At every SAA I've attended, everyone winds up in the hotel bar at the end of the night; it's the place everyone promises to see everyone else, and it's not unusual for 70 of the 700 conference-goers to still be there at last call. However, the Hyatt bar had a very loud cover band that was also very, very bad. And according to the hotel's liquor license, no one could take drinks outside of the bar itself, even to the lounge-y seating area nearby. And while I had no wish to quarrel with the terms of the liquor license or with the officious young man who was just doing his job in shooing my friends and their drinks over the threshold back into the bar, I have a firm belief that I know best--and that tackiness, inefficiency, and social stupidity are my own personal job to eliminate.
So I marched up to the officious young man and told him how awful his bar was and how much business he was losing. For reasons that are unclear to me, he seemed to care deeply about my opinions while being totally unwilling to accept that the bar could drive anyone away.
"Actually, this band is a big draw. People come here for this. It's the only bar with live music on the Eastside. People drive in from Seattle!"
Maybe, I said. But they have bad taste.
"This isn't bad music! I mean, it's not like they're playing Journey, or Bon Jovi."
A younger (prettier, blonder) friend joined me. "No," she said. "It's awful. "This drink? Is the only one I'm paying for. Normally I'd order three or four. And see all those people? They would, too."
The two of us and the hotel employee went around and around about the badness of the band for some 10 minutes before he reminded me of something I'd forgotten: the opulent steakhouse at the top of the hotel had a bar. And great views.
"It's a little. . . older." He said. "A quieter crowd, kinda stuffy? But you and your friends might like it."
Ignoring the implied insult, we seized the suggestion, grabbed a few more friends, and jumped in the elevator.
The doors opened to a bar crammed full of people not noticeably older or cooler than the people downstairs. And it was loud, mainly because there was a guy at the piano shouting Billy Joel's "Piano Man" into a microphone.
Maybe I swore or maybe the half dozen of us in our conference-y clothes just looked out of place, but a woman at the bar sneered and told us what a legend the singer was, and how everyone in the joint was there to hear him. "You're from out of town, right?" She said. "well where do you think is better than this? you think Seattle is better than this?"
It's possible that I lost it. It's possible that I told her how many places in the world were better than that particular patch of real estate and that pathetic excuse for a nightlife scene. But whatever angry tirade I may or may not have uttered, I stalked back to the elevators, trailing astonished colleagues.
And then? And then we did what I have never done: we went to the Malone Society Dance. And the dark hotel ballroom with its overpriced drinks and wedding-D.J.-music-stylings (Erasure, Madonna, the B-52s, and, yes, Journey) was still so very much better than the hotel bar.
I might have wound up on the dancefloor. I might even have sung every word to "Living on a Prayer." But you'd have to have been there to confirm it.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
SAA: Day Two
Briefly: good panels, papers, etc., and a no-more-tedious-than-usual annual luncheon.
I'm not hugely in favor of the SAA leadership's new plan to archive personal conference memories (can't all those memorialists just get blogs? which I can choose not to read?), and I did not love the speaker's repeatedly dissing the location of his first job and telling the crowd (a large number of whom were, as he noted, grad students) about the awful hardships of the 1970s and 1980s job market, and how it forced his generation to go to ridiculous jobs in ridiculous places. (Because--cry me a river.)
But then I went home to recoup for a few hours, and all was well.
I'm not hugely in favor of the SAA leadership's new plan to archive personal conference memories (can't all those memorialists just get blogs? which I can choose not to read?), and I did not love the speaker's repeatedly dissing the location of his first job and telling the crowd (a large number of whom were, as he noted, grad students) about the awful hardships of the 1970s and 1980s job market, and how it forced his generation to go to ridiculous jobs in ridiculous places. (Because--cry me a river.)
But then I went home to recoup for a few hours, and all was well.
Friday, April 08, 2011
SAA: Day One
I love the fact that the first day of SAA always starts just after lunchtime--thus avoiding the shock to the system of a conference that begins at 8 a.m. after everyone has gotten in late the night before or the irritation of a conference that starts at 4 p.m. and whose first sessions most people miss anyway. And because of my unusual housing arrangement this year, the first day was especially nice: I slept for 10 hours and awoke to a grey, damp day whose chill was immediately alleviated by a fire in the fireplace, fresh espresso, and homemade Belgian waffles.
So any worries about being isolated from The Real Conference Experience were mostly quashed. Turns out? Waiting in line to spend $7.50 for coffee and a pastry in a hotel café ain't much to regret. Moreover, my folks live so close that after a short drive I found myself in an elevator from the parking garage to the conference hotel lobby. . . and it was just like having taken an elevator down to that same lobby. And since conference hotels are the same the world over, and the crowd of friends and colleagues and acquaintances exactly as it would have been anywhere, I forgot for long stretches of time that I had any personal connection to my location. (At one point, someone asked whether I were originally from the Northeast, and I said, brightly but mechanically, "oh no! I grew up outside of Seattle, in a town called--oh.")
My seminar met on the first day, and for the first time ever, I had a submission that actually dealt with Renaissance drama. Responses to it were extremely warm (except for the eminence who said, more than once, how much my paper had troubled him and gotten under his skin), and the seminar participants themselves were lovely people doing interesting work. However, the auditors looked like they were dying a slow death, trapped in the room listening to us talk about stuff none of them had read. I've never quite figured out why people did it--sat in on other people's seminars--and though I've tried it every year and regretted it every year, watching the fidgety agony of our own auditors decided me against ever doing so again.
So the conference got off to a good start, marred only by a poorly-conceived opening reception. The food was great, but the event was a sit-down dinner in a generic, windowless hotel ballroom that replicated all the bad parts of the annual luncheon: a grim little room, no ability to circulate, and an anxious, disgruntled, middle-schoolish scrambling for friends and tables. Still, an open bar goes a long way toward mitigating all that, and Flavia after a large whiskey followed by two glasses of champagne always decides that she's what every grad student most wants: a solicitous oracle of advice and commiseration. (Grad students may in fact not want this, but it makes her feel happy and generous--and she imagines she's doing her bit for SAA's reputation as a friendly and inclusive conference. The friendly crazy drunk lady is still friendly, after all.)
Then we went out and shot some pool at a bar I didn't know existed, the average age of whose clientel appeared to be about 22.
So any worries about being isolated from The Real Conference Experience were mostly quashed. Turns out? Waiting in line to spend $7.50 for coffee and a pastry in a hotel café ain't much to regret. Moreover, my folks live so close that after a short drive I found myself in an elevator from the parking garage to the conference hotel lobby. . . and it was just like having taken an elevator down to that same lobby. And since conference hotels are the same the world over, and the crowd of friends and colleagues and acquaintances exactly as it would have been anywhere, I forgot for long stretches of time that I had any personal connection to my location. (At one point, someone asked whether I were originally from the Northeast, and I said, brightly but mechanically, "oh no! I grew up outside of Seattle, in a town called--oh.")
My seminar met on the first day, and for the first time ever, I had a submission that actually dealt with Renaissance drama. Responses to it were extremely warm (except for the eminence who said, more than once, how much my paper had troubled him and gotten under his skin), and the seminar participants themselves were lovely people doing interesting work. However, the auditors looked like they were dying a slow death, trapped in the room listening to us talk about stuff none of them had read. I've never quite figured out why people did it--sat in on other people's seminars--and though I've tried it every year and regretted it every year, watching the fidgety agony of our own auditors decided me against ever doing so again.
So the conference got off to a good start, marred only by a poorly-conceived opening reception. The food was great, but the event was a sit-down dinner in a generic, windowless hotel ballroom that replicated all the bad parts of the annual luncheon: a grim little room, no ability to circulate, and an anxious, disgruntled, middle-schoolish scrambling for friends and tables. Still, an open bar goes a long way toward mitigating all that, and Flavia after a large whiskey followed by two glasses of champagne always decides that she's what every grad student most wants: a solicitous oracle of advice and commiseration. (Grad students may in fact not want this, but it makes her feel happy and generous--and she imagines she's doing her bit for SAA's reputation as a friendly and inclusive conference. The friendly crazy drunk lady is still friendly, after all.)
Then we went out and shot some pool at a bar I didn't know existed, the average age of whose clientel appeared to be about 22.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
SAA: Day Zero
In January I mentioned some of the ways that my conference-going (or at least my MLA-going) experiences have changed over the years, but never have I had the particular experience that I'll be having this time around at SAA.
For reasons that remain obscure to me, SAA is being held in my own personal hometown. Not the city that I tell people back east I'm from, but the actual place I'm from--a sizable city in its own right, and not without its quirks or charms, but whose downtown is dominated by upscale malls and Lexus and BMW dealerships. It's totally not cool (and neither is it a great site for a conference), and with T-minus 18 hours I'm already over all the whining I expect to hear from conference-goers disappointed not to find themselves in the hipsterish enclave they thought they were headed for.
On the other hand, I'm staying with my folks, in the house I grew up in, and they've lent me their car (which they filled with gas before I got here!). I have personal knowledge of the cool places to go and a means of getting there. But I've never commuted to a conference before, and I have no idea how comfortable the shift between my familial self and my professional one will be. My childhood home is only eight miles from this year's white-hot center of Shakespeariana, but it feels much farther.
For reasons that remain obscure to me, SAA is being held in my own personal hometown. Not the city that I tell people back east I'm from, but the actual place I'm from--a sizable city in its own right, and not without its quirks or charms, but whose downtown is dominated by upscale malls and Lexus and BMW dealerships. It's totally not cool (and neither is it a great site for a conference), and with T-minus 18 hours I'm already over all the whining I expect to hear from conference-goers disappointed not to find themselves in the hipsterish enclave they thought they were headed for.
On the other hand, I'm staying with my folks, in the house I grew up in, and they've lent me their car (which they filled with gas before I got here!). I have personal knowledge of the cool places to go and a means of getting there. But I've never commuted to a conference before, and I have no idea how comfortable the shift between my familial self and my professional one will be. My childhood home is only eight miles from this year's white-hot center of Shakespeariana, but it feels much farther.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
MLALA: retrospective
I've finally made it back east, no thanks to the snowstorm and the surly incompetence of American Airlines (have you ever seen a ticket agent pick a fight with a passenger who was going out of his way to be patient and good-humored? I have now!)--so it's time for a few general observations about this year's MLA.
This is the seventh consecutive MLA I've attended and the sixth I've blogged, but it was also, probably, the least exciting. Some of my lessened excitement may be the result of the date change: say what you like about the inconvenience of the post-Christmas conference, but it ensured that most attendees were still adrenaline-charged and wound up; the hotels were decorated for the holidays, everyone was wishing everyone else a happy new year, and the conference partook of the general mood of festivity. Moving MLA well after Christmas and New Year's (and into the beginning of the term, for those on the quarter system) means that everyone has collapsed but not yet recovered, and the holidays seem very far away.
However, I don't think the date change fully accounts for my more subdued mood. Much of it, I think, has to do with this being the first MLA at which I felt like a grown-up.
My first two MLAs I was on the job market, and dazzled and excited to be surrounded by 9,000 other members of the profession. And for the next several conventions, I was still settling into my identity as a junior professor. Part of the excitement of the convention in those years was its newness, and the fun of assembling friends and associates for meals and drinks and coffee--it was fun just to feel that I had enough friends and associates to keep myself so busy.
But now, honestly? I know too many damn people. I have grad school friends whom I never see, because we're not in the same field; I have Renaissance friends whom I see at conferences two or three times a year if I'm lucky; I have RU friends whom it's fun to hang out with in a new city; I have Cosimo and Cosimo's grad school and professional friends, who have become my friends; I have blog friends whom I wish to know in real life; and I have non-academic friends who happen to live in or near the city where the convention's being held.
So although the socializing was still fun, it also felt like an obligation that I was perpetually defaulting on: I wanted to spend multiple evenings with most of the people I saw only once, and there are some people I spoke to for five minutes on the escalator, exchanged promises to catch up with later. . . and didn't.
I also found myself, for the first time, recognizing grad students as definitively younger and at an earlier career stage than myself. I had drinks with a former RU student of mine, now a Ph.D. candidate at a flagship state school out west, and found myself waxing oracular. I reassured the nervous grad student on my own panel, and had several others approach me deferentially afterward (all "Dr. Fescue" this and "Professor Fescue" that), and, holy cow: the three women from UC Davis sitting behind me in one panel looked about as old as my undergrads.
And equally suddenly, I found myself thinking of those 15 or more years ahead of me in the profession as almost-friends: people I was happy to see and could hold a normal conversation with, rather than being convinced that they were just humoring me and that we had Nothing in Common. The chair of my panel was anxious to know when my book was coming out. The editor at the press that's publishing my edition buttonholed me at a reception and demanded when I'd be sending my monograph to her.
So I guess I. . . know people? And have a professional identity? That's awesome. In fact, that's super awesome. But it makes MLA feel more like work than it used to. I used to go because it was fun, and because I desperately wanted to be a part of that world. Now I'm a part of it, and I go because it's professionally useful. These developments are good ones, in almost every conceivable way, but they do dampen one's energy and enthusiasm.
This is the seventh consecutive MLA I've attended and the sixth I've blogged, but it was also, probably, the least exciting. Some of my lessened excitement may be the result of the date change: say what you like about the inconvenience of the post-Christmas conference, but it ensured that most attendees were still adrenaline-charged and wound up; the hotels were decorated for the holidays, everyone was wishing everyone else a happy new year, and the conference partook of the general mood of festivity. Moving MLA well after Christmas and New Year's (and into the beginning of the term, for those on the quarter system) means that everyone has collapsed but not yet recovered, and the holidays seem very far away.
However, I don't think the date change fully accounts for my more subdued mood. Much of it, I think, has to do with this being the first MLA at which I felt like a grown-up.
My first two MLAs I was on the job market, and dazzled and excited to be surrounded by 9,000 other members of the profession. And for the next several conventions, I was still settling into my identity as a junior professor. Part of the excitement of the convention in those years was its newness, and the fun of assembling friends and associates for meals and drinks and coffee--it was fun just to feel that I had enough friends and associates to keep myself so busy.
But now, honestly? I know too many damn people. I have grad school friends whom I never see, because we're not in the same field; I have Renaissance friends whom I see at conferences two or three times a year if I'm lucky; I have RU friends whom it's fun to hang out with in a new city; I have Cosimo and Cosimo's grad school and professional friends, who have become my friends; I have blog friends whom I wish to know in real life; and I have non-academic friends who happen to live in or near the city where the convention's being held.
So although the socializing was still fun, it also felt like an obligation that I was perpetually defaulting on: I wanted to spend multiple evenings with most of the people I saw only once, and there are some people I spoke to for five minutes on the escalator, exchanged promises to catch up with later. . . and didn't.
I also found myself, for the first time, recognizing grad students as definitively younger and at an earlier career stage than myself. I had drinks with a former RU student of mine, now a Ph.D. candidate at a flagship state school out west, and found myself waxing oracular. I reassured the nervous grad student on my own panel, and had several others approach me deferentially afterward (all "Dr. Fescue" this and "Professor Fescue" that), and, holy cow: the three women from UC Davis sitting behind me in one panel looked about as old as my undergrads.
And equally suddenly, I found myself thinking of those 15 or more years ahead of me in the profession as almost-friends: people I was happy to see and could hold a normal conversation with, rather than being convinced that they were just humoring me and that we had Nothing in Common. The chair of my panel was anxious to know when my book was coming out. The editor at the press that's publishing my edition buttonholed me at a reception and demanded when I'd be sending my monograph to her.
So I guess I. . . know people? And have a professional identity? That's awesome. In fact, that's super awesome. But it makes MLA feel more like work than it used to. I used to go because it was fun, and because I desperately wanted to be a part of that world. Now I'm a part of it, and I go because it's professionally useful. These developments are good ones, in almost every conceivable way, but they do dampen one's energy and enthusiasm.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
MLALA: Day Three
Yesterday Cosimo and I were awakened at 7 a.m. by loud chatter from the room next door. As I went about my business getting ready, I realized that this conversation involved more than the two voices I'd first heard--and by 9 a.m. it was clear that there was a job interview in progress: modern British novel this, modern American novel that, "there are a lot of ways you could teach this course," and so on.
Since I'm not on the market, the interview portion of MLA has steadily become less real to me. I have friends who are serving on hiring committees and I have friends throwing their hats in the ring for better jobs than their current ones--but the real fear and desperation of this part of MLA feels a long way off. Listening to this conversation through the wall, and knowing that it was taking place in a small hotel room like our own, probably with committee members perched on beds (and for a job that may well have received 500 applicants), was sobering.
Indeed, Day Three seems to have been about the intrusion of real life into the manic and self-involved whirl of the conference. At lunch one of my friends cried out, having caught a glimpse of CNN on a t.v. screen in the bar behind us; eight hours later, I ran into people who still hadn't heard about the assassination in Arizona. And in the late afternoon the boozy professional chatter in the main lounge was briefly interrupted by grown men shouting--again, there was a t.v., somewhere, this time broadcasting the Seahawks-Saints football game.
I don't mean to imply any equivalence between those events, but I experienced both as disorienting intrusions and reminders of how unreal conference time and space are. Some 9,000 language and literature professionals descend on a few blocks of a city, and for three or four days we socialize only with each other, indulging in the folkways of our tribe. It's exhilarating and rejuvenating, annoying and exhausting, and I wouldn't miss it--but it's also a strange and privileged space.
I have more to say about this MLA, but it'll have to wait: Cosimo and I are headed to the bay area for a couple of days to see my brother. For now, I'll leave you with this photo, taken yesterday, immediately outside the conference hotel. We're half convinced he was a performance artist.
(Photo credit: W.H.)
Since I'm not on the market, the interview portion of MLA has steadily become less real to me. I have friends who are serving on hiring committees and I have friends throwing their hats in the ring for better jobs than their current ones--but the real fear and desperation of this part of MLA feels a long way off. Listening to this conversation through the wall, and knowing that it was taking place in a small hotel room like our own, probably with committee members perched on beds (and for a job that may well have received 500 applicants), was sobering.
Indeed, Day Three seems to have been about the intrusion of real life into the manic and self-involved whirl of the conference. At lunch one of my friends cried out, having caught a glimpse of CNN on a t.v. screen in the bar behind us; eight hours later, I ran into people who still hadn't heard about the assassination in Arizona. And in the late afternoon the boozy professional chatter in the main lounge was briefly interrupted by grown men shouting--again, there was a t.v., somewhere, this time broadcasting the Seahawks-Saints football game.
I don't mean to imply any equivalence between those events, but I experienced both as disorienting intrusions and reminders of how unreal conference time and space are. Some 9,000 language and literature professionals descend on a few blocks of a city, and for three or four days we socialize only with each other, indulging in the folkways of our tribe. It's exhilarating and rejuvenating, annoying and exhausting, and I wouldn't miss it--but it's also a strange and privileged space.
I have more to say about this MLA, but it'll have to wait: Cosimo and I are headed to the bay area for a couple of days to see my brother. For now, I'll leave you with this photo, taken yesterday, immediately outside the conference hotel. We're half convinced he was a performance artist.
(Photo credit: W.H.)
Saturday, January 08, 2011
MLALA: Day Two
Either L.A. is lame or I am: I've gotten to bed before midnight both nights. But although that might suggest to you a conference experience totally out of the ordinary, fear not! There's still been drinking, erratic eating (the first day, I carried half a loaf of panettone around in my bag; the second day, all I had to eat before dinner was a cookie), gossip-mongering, and, oh yes: conference terrorism.
Friday, January 07, 2011
MLALA: first impressions
Downtown L.A. is a crappy place to hold a conference. I knew that before in theory, but now I know it experientially: the hotels are far apart, there's not much in the way of decent restaurants in the vicinity, and the main conference hotel and the convention center (both of which host panel sessions) are a confusing and inconvenient walk away.
And, yeah: it's 65 degrees and sunny. But the schlep back and forth and the difficulty of getting anywhere without a car means the weather is not a substantial point in L.A.'s favor. Also, is sunlight really what academics want? Based on the number of black suits and pale, squinty faces I saw yesterday, I'd say no.
But not all locations have equally convenient facilities, and I do like the main conference hotel itself: it's easy to navigate, with decent conference rooms and (more importantly!) a great, lounge-y first floor with two bars and a nice, non-Starbucks café.
More irksome than the convention facilities are several bad decisions made by the organizers. It's unclear to me why they extended the conference by half a day, so that sessions yesterday began at noon rather than around dinnertime. . . but given that they did, they ought to have gotten conference rates at all the hotels for January 5th (instead of just Jan. 6-9th); I have friends who had to fly in on the 5th because of early sessions or interviews on the 6th, and who paid nearly twice as much for that first night as for the other nights. I'm also pissed off that the book exhibit wasn't open yesterday (although it appeared to be open: everyone I know got stopped by a bouncer-like figure upon attempting to enter).
(And, confidential to the Marriott bar that tried to charge me extra for ordering my whiskey on the rocks: not cool, dudes. So not cool.)
But I did manage to see and catch up with a whole crush of people in a marathon six hours, despite the fierce return of my headache, and I got to be someone else's celebrity sighting: Michael Bérubé passed me on the street, looked back uncertainly, and said, "Hey! Are you Flavia?"
So we're off to a decent start.
And, yeah: it's 65 degrees and sunny. But the schlep back and forth and the difficulty of getting anywhere without a car means the weather is not a substantial point in L.A.'s favor. Also, is sunlight really what academics want? Based on the number of black suits and pale, squinty faces I saw yesterday, I'd say no.
But not all locations have equally convenient facilities, and I do like the main conference hotel itself: it's easy to navigate, with decent conference rooms and (more importantly!) a great, lounge-y first floor with two bars and a nice, non-Starbucks café.
More irksome than the convention facilities are several bad decisions made by the organizers. It's unclear to me why they extended the conference by half a day, so that sessions yesterday began at noon rather than around dinnertime. . . but given that they did, they ought to have gotten conference rates at all the hotels for January 5th (instead of just Jan. 6-9th); I have friends who had to fly in on the 5th because of early sessions or interviews on the 6th, and who paid nearly twice as much for that first night as for the other nights. I'm also pissed off that the book exhibit wasn't open yesterday (although it appeared to be open: everyone I know got stopped by a bouncer-like figure upon attempting to enter).
(And, confidential to the Marriott bar that tried to charge me extra for ordering my whiskey on the rocks: not cool, dudes. So not cool.)
But I did manage to see and catch up with a whole crush of people in a marathon six hours, despite the fierce return of my headache, and I got to be someone else's celebrity sighting: Michael Bérubé passed me on the street, looked back uncertainly, and said, "Hey! Are you Flavia?"
So we're off to a decent start.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
MLALA: Arrival
My morning went like this:
Unlike many people, I love MLA. But perhaps my body, knowing the abuse it would be subjected to, was protesting?
Sorry, body. You can take it.
-Got up at 5.15 a.m.
-Felt strange stomach pains, which reminded me of nothing so much as the time I had an attack of diverticulitis. Panicked for an hour.
-Headed to the airport, en route to which my stomach pains went away.
-Got on plane
-Read the LRB while waiting for the plane to finish boarding.
-Found I couldn't read clearly. Identified wonkiness in field of vision as the sign of an incipient migraine.
-Panicked for 45 minutes, waiting for the migraine to set in.
-Acquired an extremely mild headache, and went back to reading
-Arrived in L.A.Unlike many people, I love MLA. But perhaps my body, knowing the abuse it would be subjected to, was protesting?
Sorry, body. You can take it.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Polyglot dreams
I spent last weekend in Toronto, crashing a conference that several friends were presenting at. It wasn't a huge conference, but it was an international one--and unlike most international conferences I've attended, it was multilingual: approximately one third of the panels were in French and the rest in English.
This fact barely registered on me when I first skimmed the program, and since the panels were segregated by language I didn't expect to have much interaction with the francophone attendees. Whatever, I thought. It's Canada. I guess that's what they do.
But in fact, all the conference-goers took coffee and cookies in the same entrance hall and we all attended the same plenary talks, and when people squeezed past or apologized for bumping into me they were as likely to say "merci!" or "pardon!" as "thanks" or "excuse me." The chair introducing one of the plenary speakers gave his opening remarks half in French and half in English (not translating: just switching languages midway through), and one speaker on a plenary panel did something similar, occasionally switching to French for a few sentences for emphasis.
It was a disorienting, strange, and rather wonderful experience, and one I'm pretty sure I've never had before. Whether at home or abroad, I'm used to being in a place where one language is the dominant one, and the other language or languages are used for private or domestic conversations: tourists talking to each other, immigrant parents murmuring to their children. But being somewhere that two languages were treated equally, and where no need for translation was assumed, was something new.
Now, I know that the politics of language are touchy in Canada, and that it's not a perfect bilingual paradise. Nevertheless, as foreign language departments are being eliminated in this country, it's hard not to look with longing toward a neighbor country that seems, at least from the outside, to be valuing language study in a way we do not.
And I should 'fess up: although I work in a period and on authors who are ferociously multilingual--and although my grad program required three foreign languages--French is the only foreign language I have any real claim to being able to speak or understand; I took it throughout high school and for a couple of years in college, but since I don't need it for my work, it's atrophied terribly. I have adequate reading knowledge of Italian, can work v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y through Latin (albeit with lots of errors), and a year's worth of ancient Greek in college left me with the ability to pronounce ANY WORD I SEE that's written in Greek characters (although I can no longer understand a line of it, if ever I could).
I have colleagues and friends with a serious command of multiple languages, and I wish I were among them. As it is, I sometimes think that I and many more academics than are willing to admit it are the PhD-holding equivalent of the kids who flounder through a year of college-level foreign language study, fulfill their requirement, and call it a day.
This fact barely registered on me when I first skimmed the program, and since the panels were segregated by language I didn't expect to have much interaction with the francophone attendees. Whatever, I thought. It's Canada. I guess that's what they do.
But in fact, all the conference-goers took coffee and cookies in the same entrance hall and we all attended the same plenary talks, and when people squeezed past or apologized for bumping into me they were as likely to say "merci!" or "pardon!" as "thanks" or "excuse me." The chair introducing one of the plenary speakers gave his opening remarks half in French and half in English (not translating: just switching languages midway through), and one speaker on a plenary panel did something similar, occasionally switching to French for a few sentences for emphasis.
It was a disorienting, strange, and rather wonderful experience, and one I'm pretty sure I've never had before. Whether at home or abroad, I'm used to being in a place where one language is the dominant one, and the other language or languages are used for private or domestic conversations: tourists talking to each other, immigrant parents murmuring to their children. But being somewhere that two languages were treated equally, and where no need for translation was assumed, was something new.
Now, I know that the politics of language are touchy in Canada, and that it's not a perfect bilingual paradise. Nevertheless, as foreign language departments are being eliminated in this country, it's hard not to look with longing toward a neighbor country that seems, at least from the outside, to be valuing language study in a way we do not.
And I should 'fess up: although I work in a period and on authors who are ferociously multilingual--and although my grad program required three foreign languages--French is the only foreign language I have any real claim to being able to speak or understand; I took it throughout high school and for a couple of years in college, but since I don't need it for my work, it's atrophied terribly. I have adequate reading knowledge of Italian, can work v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y through Latin (albeit with lots of errors), and a year's worth of ancient Greek in college left me with the ability to pronounce ANY WORD I SEE that's written in Greek characters (although I can no longer understand a line of it, if ever I could).
I have colleagues and friends with a serious command of multiple languages, and I wish I were among them. As it is, I sometimes think that I and many more academics than are willing to admit it are the PhD-holding equivalent of the kids who flounder through a year of college-level foreign language study, fulfill their requirement, and call it a day.
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