Posts Tagged ‘Marxism’
Effin’ Conferences!
I am off today to finally give the first of two conference papers. The lack of entries in this unread blog are because I was killing myself to write a talk that months ago was “no big deal.”
Last week I officially crossed that dangerous threshold where I had spent more time on my conference outfit than my paper and so I really had to bear down. Now that it’s finished (mostly), I look at it and think “why would I travel anywhere to stand up and deliver this information?” It is a lethal question, but it contains the truth.
The only consolation is that nobody else is giving anything groundbreaking either. It’s all the same stuff that you won’t remember by next week. It’s just a bit depressing to be a part of it all.
Being an academic is much like when I was in a band. You’d play a show, and many people would come and tell you things like “That was the best show I’ve ever seen. You guys are amazing.” Now I give conference papers and people say “You should think about turning that into a little book.” I could barely scrape together 2,000 words for the conference, so the prospects of a book are always hilarious to me. But it stokes the ego and I leave thinking “I will write a little book about this topic! It would be so easy!”
On top of the horrors of the conference (I’m stuck on a panel with a paper about the Post Office…) are the pitfalls of socializing with my “peers.” When you go to these mixers other grad students are generally a wash because they are to weird, insecure, or vain to really speak to. It’s all a complex dance of trying to name drop who you know, what you have written, and what scholarships you are holding. My contribution is slim because the answer to all three categories is “nil.” The key is try to find some sort of faculty member who hates the whole thing as much as me and commiserate. An old disgruntled Marxist is usually the best bet.
