An Evening in the Big Smoke

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Last night I trundled down to London for the official launch of a report I co-authored. There were many PIPs (pretty important people) and a few VIPs there, both academic and professional. Besides interacting with real people who are gainfully employed, interesting and fairly sociable, the highlight of the evening was after the event when I was given a back stage pass to the oldest and most ornate and theatrical court in the Royal Courts of Justice, the Lord Chief Justice's Court from the perspective of the bench.

Do I sound smug? Not a good start as far as the blog tone goes, particularly for a woman, but I will make sure that you think I am a hapless, harmless little creature by the end so that you still feel like you could have a drink with me so please keep reading.

Being in London dramatised the plain fact that I have clearly been in the Oxford bubble and in the write-up spiral for too long. As I boarded the train, I felt like Maria leaving the convent for the bustle of the Von Trapp household and I sensed that I was utterly provincial asking for directions at the Tube station.

Before I arrived at the launch, I made someone want to cry. That's not really what I set out to achieve each morning (as I brush my teeth) so let me explain. Having crawled out of my student comfort gear, and having made it on the train to the big smoke (which carried people I didn't know. Let's really paint the scene. There were wider factors.), I decided that I would get my hair cut with the hour I had spare. These things can be neglected. I was really looking forward to the hair wash and I don't think that was particularly unreasonable given I was coughing up £50 ("London prices", I said to myself using an old lady's voice and shaking my head).

So I was led to the basin by this young girl with diamond-textured black stockings under cute shorts, who I had tacitly assumed was (a) about 18 and (b) experienced. As soon as I lay back, ready to allow the thesis outline I had been working on that morning to leave my body, she took to my hair in a way that was no less than beastly. She carelessly pulled my hair, especially around the facial line, and grinded her knuckles into my scalp. She banged the shower head into my ear (that had been clanging the whole time as the coily bit had detached - not her fault granted, but it did not help) just as the water turned hot. I turned around and said (with very few barbs in my tone, maybe only a little one), "I am sorry, this is really just not enjoyable for me. I am not enjoying this." She asked her colleague to finish off - a little too quick to give up looking back on it.

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As I lay back into the hands of a spotty boy, I thought "I am not leaving here with any hair. That's it, I've done it." And, you know, I didn't get off too lightly. The hairdresser, as she pulled my hair straight with a brush and hairdryer, told me that I had made the 14 YEAR OLD, WORK EXPERIENCE GIRL want to cry. Once coiffed, I went over and apologised to the young girl for making her feel unfairly criticised. "I am just an uptight student," I said. The hairdresser started talking about how everyone in Oxford must be intense and serious, and so then I tried to prove that I wasn't always so intense and serious, but in my black suit, and with my acute jumpiness, and lack of middle ground small talk, it wasn't an easy sell. In fact, there's pretty much no way you can prove to someone that you're a mellow person. By engaging in the debate, you're already finished. The only way to prove it is to giggle like a child or stare at them with slow-blinking eyes and a fixed half-smile until they look away. I tried to make jokes. No, I should have just given up or better yet demanded that they hurry up and clean my feet in the manner to which I am accustomed in Oxford. My exit was not particularly regal: the classic pull the door, then go to the other (locked) one to push and then go to original to push.

I have heard from many PhD students that towards the end of the slog, your capability for medium-level, respectable chat is lost; that anything irrelevant to your thesis or not complete slosh (like Lily Allen's underwear or an episode in The Wire) is too challenging. It did take me a few conversations at the event to untie my tongue and to sensibly engage. I gradually got it together, had an enjoyable time, and was asked to contribute some of my thesis work, and offered the prospect of a small research job.

Nevertheless, unless there's a very, very good reason, I have decided that I am not going to heavily populated places until I have submitted. It's simply too spooky for everyone involved.


I wrote this post this morning. I have just come back from an academic practice symposium. It was re-energising to share ideas with other students about our academic careers and communities. I have also been left with some good practical guidance for the "next step" (which I may write up as a more generic blog post soon). So maybe I don't actually need to hide away with Mother Superior until I am finished as planned. Perhaps I just need to connect with like-minded people who have had similar experiences until I am ready for that middle ground again.

It's Con-ference, It's Con-ference Time

I presented a paper at a conference in London last week. BTW, I have Business Time (Flight of the Conchords) in my head, hence the title.

Highs:

1. Escaping my bubble (write-up) within a bubble (Oxford) to meet other, more experienced academics in my field. Even just seeing that there are breathing people behind all the articles and books is comforting.
2. Cruising (avec iPod) to the conference each morning via Blackfriar's Bridge and Temple Gardens. Felt that elusive sense of being on my own and liking it.
3. Learning something from the extra-curricular activities: 'how to get published' and 'how to get funding' - both vital in this crazy publish (preferably empirical or policy based research) or perish world. The Cambridge University Press representative frightened the baby scholars like me with grim statistics and a warning that theses with an 'international' dimension fare better. Fate united us in the lift later on and I told her that I had decided, after what she had said, to pack it all in, that there was no way I could tack on an international element. I am not sure if she knew I was not serious.
   
4. I was going to end my presentation by saying 'Now, I welcome positive, constructive feedback' but I figured that I might sound like a hyper-sensitive, stupidly proud academic (who me? I eat unhelpful, personal attacks for breakfast!) so I didn't. And, quite surprisingly, the comments were all positive and helpful. Got to be happy about that.
5. Receiving four emails the day after my presentation asking for further copies of my paper, suggesting potential research collaborations and future presentations. Noice.
6. Giving out my pretty special MOO cards which have photographs symbolising my research interests on the back. Smooth.
7. Having a 'blind' reviewer inform me that my article I submitted three months ago has been accepted into a solid journal. Yipee! Am ticking the boxes!
   

Lows:

1. Craving sweets throughout the day, red wine in the evening. Not being able to resist either.
   
2. The lights from the opposite building creeping through the curtain, aggravating my already jittery sleep.
   
3. Giving this nervous female academic (15 years my senior) this pep talk about how women often undervalue their work and that she was entitled to be there, that she would be able to handle the feedback etc, only for her talk to then be rather weak and poorly received (gulp). I felt like a mother taking off the training wheels and sending her child into a tree. I still remember her face - eyes blinking - turning to me for help. I could not think of a question that would bail her out. It was awful, she felt bad, and the more I tried to reassure her, the more she would repeat that I would be OK because I was from Oxford. Geez.
   
4. Spotting a couple of English guys huddled together after the 'how to get published' talk and asking them in a fat jolly chef kind of way if they were 'negotiating a book deal?' I hadn't picked up that they were the smug and impenetrable English type - not to be confused with the cool but polite Constant Gardener type and one of them said, 'We are actually, now sod off'. I said lightly, 'OK. I can't wait to read it'.
5. Hearing academics whose work I admire slag off each other behind each other's backs. I just felt like saying 'Oh, please don't.' Actually, I did tell one person that I did not feel comfortable and that I was not in any place to comment. A gratuitous bitchfest felt so last century for me in my personal journey down the road of life, that winding road of life. My Head of Dept has since told me that I should not expect academics to behave any better than any one else.
6. Post-conference fatigue. I feel like I have been to an early 90s rave or at least that's what I think I would have felt like had I been to one.
7. Befriending someone there - a really gentle, nice guy - who is now convinced we are bosom buddies. He has emailed me three times since I returned home. Conferences are like reality TV shows: people think they have bonded more than they really have. We just walked back from the conference to the accommodation a couple of times. I think that merits an email if he is ever in Oxford, that's it.