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.
Showing posts with label SAA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SAA. Show all posts
Thursday, April 16, 2015
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.
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.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
SAA: beaten with a stick
Conference partying is well and good, but its wages are, if not death, still pretty grim: I always wake up on the last day feeling like I've been beaten with a stick. My lower back aches from hours of standing around gabbing in heels. My shoulders are cricked from an equal number of hours hunched over a notepad. My skin is ghastly from too little sleep and too much drink and overly rich meals out on the town.
Maybe this is why so many of our departments provide so little travel funding: like taxes on cigarettes, it's intended for our own good.
Maybe this is why so many of our departments provide so little travel funding: like taxes on cigarettes, it's intended for our own good.
Friday, April 10, 2009
SAA: ain't nothing but a party
On Tuesday I reminded my Shakespeare students that our Thursday class was cancelled, and I explained that I'd be out of town at a conference. I'd intended to make a light joke of it--saying something about how while they were all napping and playing video games I'd be partying with 800 Shakespeareans--but no sooner had I said the words "Shakespeare Association of America" than the entire room burst out laughing.
I paused, puzzled. This class does tend to find my jokes hilarious, but I hadn't gotten to the joke yet. Attempting a recovery, I arched an eyebrow and said something about what a crazy scene it was going to be, and how lucky they were to have me bringing them bulletins from the front.
They laughed harder, and I realized that I didn't need to make a joke: the mere fact that 800 Shakespeareans existed (and that we get together and talk about Shakespeare and shit) was sufficiently hilarious to them.
* * * * *
I have no interest in my students knowing just how fun conferences are--how full of gossip and drunkenness and bad behavior--and if they did, surely the idea would fill them with terror and pity as much as laughter. But it's my own feeling that parties have only gotten more fun as I've gotten older and the people have gotten more interesting, and the ability to mingle work and play (and to play with such smart people) is one of the wonderful things about this profession. It's our students, really, who have an impoverished notion of what partying is.
I paused, puzzled. This class does tend to find my jokes hilarious, but I hadn't gotten to the joke yet. Attempting a recovery, I arched an eyebrow and said something about what a crazy scene it was going to be, and how lucky they were to have me bringing them bulletins from the front.
They laughed harder, and I realized that I didn't need to make a joke: the mere fact that 800 Shakespeareans existed (and that we get together and talk about Shakespeare and shit) was sufficiently hilarious to them.
* * * * *
I have no interest in my students knowing just how fun conferences are--how full of gossip and drunkenness and bad behavior--and if they did, surely the idea would fill them with terror and pity as much as laughter. But it's my own feeling that parties have only gotten more fun as I've gotten older and the people have gotten more interesting, and the ability to mingle work and play (and to play with such smart people) is one of the wonderful things about this profession. It's our students, really, who have an impoverished notion of what partying is.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Conference shakes ass; capital quails
From early tomorrow through late Sunday I'll be among the other ass-shakers in Our Nation's Capital. I'm pleased by both the location and the company, but irritated, once again, that SAA is always scheduled over Easter and usually over Passover.
I mean, everyone knows that academics are a bunch of family-hating atheists--but is it really in our professional interests to be so obvious about it?
I mean, everyone knows that academics are a bunch of family-hating atheists--but is it really in our professional interests to be so obvious about it?
Monday, February 23, 2009
Someone call marketing
As I was finishing up my SAA seminar paper this weekend, I took a break to surf the internet. Seeing that Evey was on Gmail, I sent her a chat and we IMed for a few minutes until guilt got the better of me.
Me: Okay, dude--gotta get back to my paper.And you know, I'm no drama scholar--but if they'd advertised it that way, I'd have started attending years earlier.
Evey: Conference?
Me: Yeah. SAA
(Shax Assoc)
They do seminars--submit in advance.
Evey: Shakes Ass!
Good times!
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