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| Prof. Cathy "Drinks from the Hose" at every MLA. |
Q: I know that year end is often a time when academics gather for bacchanal-styled "conferences," drunken orgies, and job-pimping disguised as scholarly meetings. What are they all? Where are they this year? Are you going? And what's more likely, you'll get laid, drunk, a job, or just some academic enjoyment?
- Scholar Stu
AS, that was hilarious. Sorry I missed it.
ReplyDeleteReg, in any community, there are the nice houses and there are the trailer parks out on the edge of town.
AS, damn that was funny.
To the business at hand, let's see here.
Get laid: I'm married, so I can't do that anymore unless I bring Mrs. Beaker. Even then, that's just marriage sex which is not quite the same thing.
Get drunk: Isn't that what the plane flight is for? Hell, isn't that what every minute after 4:30 pm is for?
Get a job: That's taken care of, as long as nobody stops by my office at 4:30 pm.
Academic enjoyment: To be honest, that's why I go. I show off a bit, kiss other people's ass a bit and grab some free stuff at the vendor show. (If you go to a science trade show, here's a fun prank. Walk up to some instrument sales display and act like you're trying to take the expensive instrument they have on display. The poor salesperson will flip out. Just say that you thought it was a free sample.)
I'm not going to my disciplinary Big Conference this year because the airfare is $700, the train ticket is $500, and driving is not an option. AND since I'm an adjunct, there's no grant money available to defray these costs. Fuckers.
ReplyDeleteI do like going to academic conferences where I can geek out with my fellow rattan-necromacy studies peeps. There's a fair bit of "oh yeah, let me tell you this CRAZY thing that I saw this one time..." It's fun. It is not intellectually enlightening, but it's fun.
It's a bit of a relief not to be going to one, though, because they always give me migraines. Noise, too many people, too much posturing.
I'm going this year, for the first in about 5, because we're hiring.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger I loved the conferences. I liked getting to meet people doing my job elsewhere. It made me happy to be where I was when I heard horror stories.
I did get laid at a conference once. But it was the wife. It was still wonderful!
The Modern Language Association is in Seattle in early January. (They moved their longstanding date between Christmas and New Years a couple of years ago...thank God!)
ReplyDeleteAnd it's so nice they've had fairly recent conventions in the west! I'll never forget whatever year it was in San Diego. I made about 10% of the seminars I was going to attend, but took a surfing lesson with a famous English prof. This is such boring trivia, sorry.
Conferences are for drinking. They are lubricated with a vast array of open bars. Publishers are like whiskey pimps.
ReplyDeleteI would go to them even if I wasn't a proffie.
I'm not going this year, but I really do tend to enjoy them, for the same reason Beaken Ben and HoB point out: geeking out with fellow scholars.
ReplyDeleteI don't drink very much anymore, and unless I'm bringing the OH, there's no sex, though I was hit on by a used-up and scary-looking music celebrity last spring at a national conference in Florida that was going on at the same time as a music festival. I went back to my room and watched Transformers on TBS instead.
I vastly prefer local conferences & themed conferences, in fact any conference that doesn't have hirings & interviewings and Important People Hurrying About In Grey Suits and posturing and the pervasive smell fear. So I avoid the big end-of-year conferences. It's expensive, too; I do get a travel grant but by the time you add up air fare, hotel bill, actually eating while I'm there, and $200+ conference registration fee, I'll still be out $1500, and that just after Christmas when I don't have any money anyway. So I am very, very grateful to have a job and to only have to go to the Big Important Conference when it's my turn to be on a hiring committee.
ReplyDeleteBut local conferences and conferences on specific subjects are great. You can actually learn something, relax, have great conversations with interesting people, and maybe hang out and see a little bit of the town too. And they're cheaper.
I'm headed to the city of broad smokers in January.
ReplyDeleteThe forecast calls for:
A 0% chance of sex.
A 100% chance of drinking.
and
A 10% chance of academic enjoyment. I can't remember the last AHA panel I enjoyed, but I suppose I shouldn't discount the possibility altogether.
God I hate the AHA, but I'll be there yet again.
I look forward to the days when the MLA for me will be defined more by alcohol and less by nervous breakdowns. Yes, you get to see all of your old colleagues, but now it's all "only one beer for me, got two interviews tomorrow," or "got to get back to the hotel room now and obsess about how that last one went." Maybe there are some job marketeers out there who are confident and relaxed enough in that capacity to head out and get blasted, but I don't know any of those people.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, I'll be in Seattle, but fuck the shiny downtown hotel bars. I'm hitting the Blue Moon or, if things go really badly, the Comet.
In my (science) field, most conferences are in the summer. There is only social drinking, to relieve the tension of the intense plenary sessions. There is no sex I've ever noticed, nor do we use conferences to do interviews.
ReplyDeleteMy national conference is being held in my home city! So I can get super drunk and frikkin WALK HOME afterward. Very excited.
ReplyDelete(And will be carrying a Beaker Ben tote, in case other miserarians are around)