Lessons for Next Time

photo by: Rustman

I was at a three-day conference this week. I met up with some academic friends from the circuit, I attended a few fascinating presentations from various fields (something that always makes me feel less isolated and more inspired about the academic enterprise), and I received a lot of positive feedback after my paper.

However, it was also terribly exhausting. These days, even heading to the shops can be a small test of character so I am not sure how I thought mingling with over two hundred cerebralites would be a supple experience. I have been assured that this general ickiness is thesis-related. But just in case things don't change after submission, I have written myself a list of things I need to read before the next conference:

Your Pre-Conference Reminder

1. Arrive with some sense of stillness. You are always zonked by the time you walk past the first set of publishers' stalls after registration. Pack earlier. Leave the evening before for relaxation.
   
   
2. Give a positive comment before questions and comments (because you're almost always enthused by the research going on out there!).
   
   
3. Avoid responding vocally to phrases like 'transferable skills' or 'employability' in other people's presentations unless you have written down my question or comment beforehand. It's essentially an emotional response and should probably be left to eye-twitching unless an answerable question can be posed or a measured comment can be made.
   
   
4. Remember to take a watch or finally buckle and trade in your 2004 phone for one with some useful applications (and some degree of attractiveness). Having to ask a fellow participant to provide your wake-up calls each day (via mobile phone) isn't smooth.
   
   
5. Avoid the biscuits at afternoon tea. They make you zone out during the last session and contribute to your erratic responses to certain buzz words.
   
   
6. Be more accommodating and subdued when accepting feedback. Maybe don't say, in response to someone suggesting you read more Bourdieu, that while you like his work, you think that most empirical researchers tackle the agency-structure problem by producing one paragraph that summarises his concepts of disposition, field and habitus and then simply present their findings. That's probably unwisely presuming that audience members (in front of their peers) know that the spirit behind very nearly everything you say in any context is good and that of course you appreciate their advice.
   
   
7. Red wine at the social events is not your ally. It doesn't matter that everyone else is drinking loads of it. (Actually, I think you learnt this from last time and did well on this front. Keep up the good work!)
   
   
8. Account for the extra time needed to unwind before falling asleep each night. Travelodges, one of the premier destinations for student-participants, are strange institutions with lots of noise and pinewood, unnervingly young staff, arbitrary heating and no phones (and therefore no wake-up calls). You know you need optimum conditions for a restful sleep.
   
   

I like the picture above as it suggests coyness (which is how I feel about my reminder list), but I realise that toes touching also suggests feminine meekness, and may be anti-feminist of me. I may go off it and change it.

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.