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But it is a post about what grad students are SOLD about academic conferences and then what they really are.
My mentors, people I look up to and admire, often talk about discipline seminars and conferences as gatherings of like minded scholars sharing their work from the past year.
Of course, after just 2 days on the ground in my first real conference, I've discovered they're just booze-soaked bacchanals
of pettiness, extramarital petting, and abuse.I've witnessed an orgy of self-importance among moderately talented professors, such an abuse of their power over grad students and underlings - men and women. I am actually embarrassed at some of the behavior I saw last night at a publisher "drink-a-thon" from my mentors, from my diss advisor, from her husband! I seriously can't imagine going back to Small, Moderately Good University and get back to my program.
I have invested my scholarly coin in a group of lecherous, sloppy cretins, and I didn't know it until this week.
What a path I have chosen!
Relax, Fredo. Your mileage may vary.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you've got a couple of mentors who might cut loose a bit at the AHA or MLA. Try not to get yourself in a tizzy over it.
When academics get to see old pals once a year at most, it's sort of fun to catch up, have a bottle of wine, and remember the old grad school craziness.
I'm sensing you're overly sensitive to this, and maybe just weren't ready to think of your mentors as human beings. They're not research and scholarship automotons, baby. They're just flesh.
Don't indict all conferences either. These gigantic year-end ones - specifically the two you mention in the humanities - are notorious for being a little more bawdy. Most of them, and I mean MOST of them, are hardly bacchanals of anything.
My first national conference was for my subdiscipline and it was hardly a bacchanal either. True, the most valuable things happened in the bar over beer but that's networking and to get a lot out of it you didn't even have to be drinking. The only disappointing thing about it was discovering that one of the big names in my field was crazy... but I wasn't doing his kind of work anyway. So it's not like I was going to be seeking his advise ever. And i should say Herr Doktor Bancroft Prize was dead sober too.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, conferences often have the value of letting you figure out who is crazy.
Don't assume your experiance is universal Fredo, and if you weren't ready to accept that your dis adviser was a human being I have no sympathy for you. Man up, grow up, and move on.
Don't give up on conferences until you've attended one or two smaller, more specialized, and/or regional ones; they're often more collegial, and definitely easier to navigate. The growing genre of graduate student conferences is also worth exploring; you won't meet (okay, see from afar) leading lights in your field, but you will get to network with your own cohort. But, if you possibly can, try to seek out a smaller intergenerational conference this spring or early summer (whether or not your advisor is planning to attend one); you may be pleasantly surprised, and at least you'll have a fuller picture of the possibilities of your discipline (and whether this is, in fact, a community you really want to join; if not -- and especially if the degree you're seeking doesn't lead to much in the way of outside-the-academy employment possibilities -- it's probably time to reconsider your chosen path).
ReplyDeleteGeez, you act as if you have a problem with all this!
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ReplyDeleteConsider the circumstances, Fredo. Cutting loose is the payoff for numbing our butts in hotel chairs.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's different in the sciences, but for big conferences in the humanities, boredom is the order of the day. I can barely remember most of the snooze-tacular conference presentations I've seen. After suffering through a full day of monotone speakers reading papers to us, hitting the bar and hooting it up is our reward.
Besides, odds are that if your profs observed you and your homies kickin' it, your profs would be just as appalled at your behavior as you were at theirs. Chizzill.
Darn, I'm apparently missing out. I've had some drinks, and even a few good nights out at national conferences, but nothing worthy of a college frat party, let alone Bacchus himself. I'll wear a lower cut top next time.
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing at a conference (or anywhere else, for that matter) is to have such a prissy, judgmental, puritanical colleague present. There is this type of person that can't stand people having fun. Everybody needs to be "productive" all the time. Work, work, work. How dare anybody relax, enjoy existence, and maybe even - the horror! - have a drink.
ReplyDeleteThere is a small, specialized conference just an hour away each year. I always go to both days' events, but only to the workshops during the day. Those darn family obligations I'd actually rather be doing at night interfere with the evening dinners/free for alls.
ReplyDeleteBut I always sense in the air a certain.....well, I think that...that...improprieties MAY be occurring whilst I am away! The horror! The horror!
Some of us have to travel 1000 miles away to fly our freak flags. Go judge someone else.
ReplyDeleteIt's fun when the self-admitted drunks and leches try to defend themselves and their bad behavior.
ReplyDeleteConferences are prohibitively expensive and should be attended sparingly and deliberately to avoid the nonsense.
Most people I know fly in for a one-day stopover to give a paper, meet with friends and colleagues, and then flee before they find out what jerks their editors and far-flung research partners are when they are away from home and spouse.
Not everyone has a grant or department support to look on conference attendance as a week-long (or long weekend) of revelry, debauchery, sexcapades, abuse, and/or pettiness.
Oh and to those who think these sorts of observations are "judgmental," if you have a retaliatory comment please realize that you're just as judgmental too.
And don;t get me started on the disciplines that use conferences to interview 100 job candidates just to whittle their list down to 5. Prohibitively Expensive. Full Stop.
Fredo, I admit I had a similar sort of experience the first time I went to a national conference.
ReplyDeleteBut now I get a kick out of seeing old friends each year in a nice hotel somewhere. Although the weather has been quite cool for LA, at least there's no snow, and I've not worn a coat even once!)
You sound judgmental, and I don't know how I feel about that.
As for Flaming, well, conference interviews are awfully cost-effective for departments. Instead of 5 colleges having to get me to them, they can see me in one place. And I get to avoid the hassle and inconvenience by seeing all of them in one location. It's been my experience that most MLA conference interviews cut a list of 10-12 (at most) down to 2-3 campus visits. You couldn't interview 100 candidates in 2-3 days - and who would want to?
My interview this morning was with a school who asked to see 6 people at the conference, 2 of whom will go to campus in February - hope it's me!
Damn! I wish conferences in the sciences were this much fun! I am green with envy.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you've heard about the time the American Physical Society met in Las Vegas, and it was the worst week in the city's history: they were un-invited back. The next year there was a nearly exact repeat, by the American Chemical Society.
Wasn't that the time Prof. Frink created an army of Atomic-Powered Supermen in his hotel room?
ReplyDelete@Bella: Yep, I suspect that fun, especially of the liquid variety, is had at small conferences, too (I tend to go to bed fairly early, which doesn't seem to bother anybody; it's possible to unobtrusively opt out of what one doesn't enjoy, and/or isn't good at). Sexual hijinks are probably a little less common at such conferences, since people are closer to home (and the selection of possible partners is smaller, but maybe I'm not the best person to opine on that particular subject, since I'm a middle-aged straight woman who attends a good many women's/gender studies conferences, which don't tend to attract a large number of people who would be potential sexual partners for me). Most important, the narcissist quotient at smaller conferences is usually greatly reduced; with the exception of the occasional person trying to take advantage of the big-fish-in-a-small-pond phenomenon, most participants come to actually participate, meet new people, bat ideas around with people with similar interests, etc., not to perform for an audience (inside or outside a formal conference session).
ReplyDeleteProfessors are human beings. Why they should be any different when it comes to human folly is a bit beyond me. It is a fact of life that some people drink more than they should and some people push boundaries they shouldn't. I think the bigger issue that you had previously built your proffies into something they are not: gods, monks, shining stars of moral comport, leaders beyond reproach.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, getting above yourself at a publisher party does not make you a drunk, no matter what the Pentecostals say. Nor does it make you a sloppy cretin. Coming from a family of real-deal drunks who drank up paychecks and let their kid go without food and who usually killed themselves with drink by the age of 50, let's separate your painful disappointment with people you admired from what drunks really are. If your advisor was a real-deal drunk, I doubt it would have taken you until the conference to see it. Keep in mind that your profs were graduate students once, and the people they are cutting loose with now are probably grad school or longtime friends.
However, Flaming is right in that conferences are very expensive. Most in my world give pretty good breaks for students, but still: travel is expensive.
But he is also wrong about going sparingly. You should pick a couple conferences strategically, ones where you cultivated both acquaintances and like-minded scholars,and go to those when you can afford to. You want people to get to know you and your work, favorably, so that they can write you external letters at tenure time, and so that your name is on their lips when a job opens up at their school. You are 400 times better off as a PhD candidate if you have made a pleasant and positive impression at a conference than if you are, simply, another cv in a pile. Conferences are about networking, pure and simple. One reason your advisor can act up is that she probably doesn't need to network much any more. You do have to network, and that's why your mentors are encouraging you to go.
And that is another argument for going to smaller conferences. It's easier to rub elbows there.
You can take advantage of all the networking possibilities and avoid the parties if you choose. Go early to the receptions, make the rounds before people start getting lit, and then discreetly go back to your room or out to the city with friends. Make plans. Cultivate acquaintances who would rather go out for a walk by the river/boulevard/shopping than drink and talk. You're in charge of how you spend your time, even in graduate school, and you don't have to do anything you don't want to. Be polite, be pleasant, and if the scene changes, absent yourself.
In the end, as you get over your disappointment, ask yourself why it's so important to you that your advisor behave in a way that fits your image. Can you really only learn from paragons? No. Functionally, the reason why you want to learn from your advisor is that she has the job you want someday, and she can help get you there. If that's not why you are studying with her, then you do, indeed, have a problem.
I wonder, given the high emotional pitch of the post, whether something more specific and damaging happened. If you were actually hit on by any of your mentors and you don't think your advisor would go to bat for you, then you have a number of options. I've heard successful stories of whistle blowing, I've heard disastrous stories of whistle blowing,and so it is hard to know what to do. But if somebody really is a creep, I'm really sorry that happened. Nobody should have to put up with that.
"I'm sure you've heard about the time the American Physical Society met in Las Vegas," A bunch of people who understand statistics in Las Vegas?! (shudder)
ReplyDeleteAs someone chained to online work, I dig conferences. I see people. Real ones. Even the ones who read from their papers have a pulse, unlike life at Corporate Online U. I can live with it. I like it. I'll even fly on my own dime occasionally. And no, I'm not banging or even groping someone. I don't get drunk. It just is what it is and I can blend out the bits of boredom and opportunism etc. and enjoy it for what it is. Bring it on.
ReplyDeleteI've been to ... let's just say lots ... and I've never seen anything like that. But, like all the good gossip at work, I may just be missing it. But I never went as part of a contingent, nor were my advisors the "hang out and drink with" sorts.
ReplyDeleteBBear,
ReplyDeleteThanks for saying I was wrong and then basically restating exactly what I said, just in your own words.
"Sparingly and deliberately" means "don't go to those expensive conferences in far away lands every year." (btw, "a couple" is sparingly to me). The advice about smaller conferences had already been made by others.
All,
Additionally, there's no reason for profs to "recommend" a first-year (and in most cases even a second-year!) go to a conference "just to see what it's like," which is what many of my cohort's mentors told us (almost an exact quote). If it's local, go for it.
Just don't fly to Denmark for an international conference unless someone else is footing the bill or you are a Rockefellar, Vanderbilt, or Trump.
Maybe go to 1-2 local ones as a student and then pray for the $$$ to go to larger, more prominent ones when dissertating. There is absolutely NO reason to acquire debt going to conferences for no good reason other than you were advised to do so.
Too many profs have no clue how poorly compensated their grad students are. I swear to god, I think my profs thought we were well-paid making $14K a year doing their dirty work, not realizing we weren't even earning above the poverty level.
I liked Bitchy Bear's post, which offered solutions rather than more judgment. Here are a couple of suggestions related to it and to FF's response.
ReplyDelete1. If some cretin did hit on Fredo, it's possible to blow the whistle by playing naive gossiper. One says to Prof. Cretin's colleague, innocently, "I thought Prof. Cretin was married, didn't you?" "Why?" "Well, he asked me out at Conference X." (Even if he was far more loutish than that.) This worked well for me once, though the hit didn't happen at a conference.
2. @ FF, I think 1 or 2 local conferences until you're ABD aren't enough. A great way to get to conferences cheaply and to start networking with the cohort is to volunteer at a national conference that's within a reasonable airfare distance. I used to get conference registration fees paid and lots of swag, including free or half-price books from the vendors that they didn't want to ship home at the end of the conference. And of course, the time-honored cheap lodging for students is to pack as many as possible into one hotel room, using cots as needed.
I missed it. Who confessed to being a drunken lecher?
ReplyDeleteI sympathize somewhat with Fredo. As a teetotaler, it's been challenging to get used to seeing the people I respect as academic mentors 'indulging' at all, let alone to the point of intoxication. (Don't give up on the conference-going because of it, though.)
ReplyDeleteI've been more disappointed, however, at the extent to which some conference organizers intentionally pair networking opportunities with alcohol consumption, given that recovering alcoholics and adherents of several major religious faiths often don't feel comfortable in situations where others are drinking, even if they themselves abstain. It's one of the few situations in academe that I feel self-conscious about my (usually quite private) spiritual commitments.
And being compelled to admit, as one sometimes is in such social situations, that one is not just "not drinking tonight" but "doesn't drink (at all)," can be a stressful experience for those of us in student/junior positions who wish to scrupulously avoid appearing judgmental of our senior colleagues, looking 'old-fashioned', or seeming to be 'not a team player' in these important, impression-leaving encounters.
Long ago I decided to engage with my colleagues at conferences on my own terms. I never go to conference parties, or hang out in the lobby bar. I also came from a family of drunks and I hate seeing people getting sloppy drunk. It truely stresses me out. So, I network through lunch, dinner, and coffee dates. I chat with people who attend the same sessions, or at the book exhibit. So if you do not like the party side of things, don't go to the parties, or the lobby bar. Just do your own thing. It will make the conference a better experience for you.
ReplyDeleteFlaming-
ReplyDeleteThanks explaining your big words to me. Are you always this constructive?
But you are still wrong.
I wanted to point out that you don't need to go to every conference that comes up, but pick the ones you like--and then stick with them. It's hard and expensive to go every year to same ones you commit to--but when you do commit to a conference, you should probably go fairly consistently to those, year after year, and not skip years tempting though that can be financially.