Friday, June 22, 2007
Conferences are not necessarily realms of the academic elite.
Or, Conference Questions I Have Been Asked.
Cause: Me giving a paper on a piece of Holocaust writing and suggesting, nervously and terrified of being called anti-Semitic, that this particular novel states that it's not always good to remember the past and sometimes we just need to move on.
Effect: Tiny elderly man raising his hand to ask a question about my potentially offensive paper. (Oh, shit.) "Did you bring that water with you all the way from home?" "Uh, no, I filled my mug up here." "That's good, because we have very good water here."
Cause: Me giving a paper on an obscure children's book from another country by an otherwise famous author and presenting a tangled case for the book's metaphoric use of a folk hero, terrified I'll be corrected by a native of the country in question.
Effect: Beaming, balding man: "Did Disney ever do a version of this?" ". . . no."
Cause: Me giving a paper on a piece of Holocaust writing and suggesting, nervously and terrified of being called anti-Semitic, that this particular novel states that it's not always good to remember the past and sometimes we just need to move on.
Effect: Tiny elderly man raising his hand to ask a question about my potentially offensive paper. (Oh, shit.) "Did you bring that water with you all the way from home?" "Uh, no, I filled my mug up here." "That's good, because we have very good water here."
Cause: Me giving a paper on an obscure children's book from another country by an otherwise famous author and presenting a tangled case for the book's metaphoric use of a folk hero, terrified I'll be corrected by a native of the country in question.
Effect: Beaming, balding man: "Did Disney ever do a version of this?" ". . . no."
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
And then I yell at my students for slacking off
Yes, it's true. In less than twelve hours I get in my car and drive a thousand miles to deliver a conference paper. (Well, technically I'm only driving eight hundred miles tomorrow and two hundred the next day, but still.) As of this moment, I have not yet:
* Packed
* Readied my car for this trip (shouldn't there be air in the tires?)
* Prepared my pets for my absence
* Acquired phone numbers for the places I'll be staying
* Finished the conference paper
About the only thing I've managed to do is buy a new shirt (four whole dollars!) to wear while delivering the paper that does not exist, and throw my printer into the back of my car so that I can print the paper at the fictional time in the future when it will be finished.
Bonus: my mother will be at said conference. Listening to the paper I haven't written about a topic I know very little about. Dammit, academia was supposed to be a haven for cowards, not an obstacle course for the poorly organized.
* Packed
* Readied my car for this trip (shouldn't there be air in the tires?)
* Prepared my pets for my absence
* Acquired phone numbers for the places I'll be staying
* Finished the conference paper
About the only thing I've managed to do is buy a new shirt (four whole dollars!) to wear while delivering the paper that does not exist, and throw my printer into the back of my car so that I can print the paper at the fictional time in the future when it will be finished.
Bonus: my mother will be at said conference. Listening to the paper I haven't written about a topic I know very little about. Dammit, academia was supposed to be a haven for cowards, not an obstacle course for the poorly organized.
