RBOC, Kzoo edition

I realized that after losing my post in the Detroit airport, I didn't actually say very much about this year's Kalamazoo. So I thought I'd rectify that. But in the absence of any central theme or point, I thought I'd go with some RBOC.

• To work my way backwards, I've returned home to find that ironically, attending Kalamazoo has rejuvenated my teaching. I'm not going to claim any brilliant pedagogical performances in the week since I've been back, but I was really dreading going to class in the couple of weeks leading up to the conference (and class was always fine once we got started - I just didn't want to go), and this week I wasn't dreading class anymore.
      
  
  • On the one hand, this makes me a little sadder about changing careers - when I was DREADING class, all I could think was, Thank God I'm going to law school! What a brilliant decision! Now that I'm not dreading class, I think, Huh, I can actually imagine continuing to do this for a while longer. But I won't be. That's a little sad.
        
  • On the other hand, having a better attitude about teaching is good, because it reassures me that I wasn't deluding myself about this career all the years I've been doing it so far. I'd been getting so sick of teaching that I'd been thinking, Have I really just hated teaching all these years, and somehow I managed to fool myself into thinking I liked it? Was spending all these years on teaching just a sham? It's nice to think that even if I've decided to change careers, it's not because my first choice was a complete disaster and a waste of my time.
       
• There were times at Kzoo when I was sad about leaving the profession. In many ways, Kzoo is so much about the future - planning sessions for the following year, pitching potential books, connecting with other scholars in your field in order better to pursue all your upcoming projects - that attending with no eye to the future was strange and a little isolating. Here's everyone around you buzzing with (sometimes manic) energy and hope for big things to come, and it has nothing to do with you. It wasn't devastating, which is good, but it was bittersweet.
      
• One of my FAVORITE moments: attending a very interesting panel on some "big picture" kinds of things in women's history, hearing someone ask a (slightly random) question about teaching and students and teaching students about "bias," and getting to hear an extremely eminent scholar say: "If I can get on my 30-second soapbox: never never never never never never never NEVER say bias. Say perspective, point of view, mindset, attitude, whatever, but NEVER say bias. For one thing, students can't use it grammatically and keep saying that someone is 'bias' without the '-ed.' But mostly because if you talk about bias, the students think it's possible NOT to be biased, if you try hard enough, and that bias is a sign of poor character or bad morals or something." It was awesome. I nearly stood up and cheered.
      
• I did not manage to collect any spectacularly weird medievalist outfits this year. Everyone I encountered looked pretty darn good. (Although I did notice a couple of hovering-on-indecent wrap dresses - sometimes those plunging necklines are a little difficult to navigate for those of you with serious boobage.) However, watching the prom kids parade around the Radisson on Saturday evening was pretty amusing. One young lothario was wearing a FUSCHIA tuxedo. Seriously, it was retina-searing fuschia (a color I quite like, myself), with a fuschia brocade waistcoat. The crowning touch? His date was wearing teal.
      
• I presided over a session with more presenters than audience, which was a shame, because the presenters did a nice job. I'd actually thought that the sessions this year had all seemed very well-attended, but that fell apart on Sunday - post-dance, early in the morning, and this year, cold, windy, and wet. I also think that flight options to/from Kalamazoo have narrowed in recent years, and that more people are forced to ditch the Sunday sessions than ever before, if they want to get home on Sunday, because there aren't enough flights after the Sunday sessions are over (I know one person who presented in the last time slot on Sunday had to fly home the next day because there were no available seats on any Sunday flights).
      
• Each year I go to Kalamazoo I have more fun because I know more people, and this year was no exception. In fact, I think this year was the first that I had potential company lined up for every single meal I had free. It was great to see online medievalists Dr. Virago, T.E., meg, ADM, and Lisa again, and it was also great finally to meet in person Notorious Ph.D., the Rebel Lettriste, Dame Eleanor Hull, and Janice (who probably wins the award for "early history person I've known longest online before getting to meet face to face"!). My apologies if I'm leaving anyone out!
      
• I really didn't explore the book exhibit this time round (though I did see Dr. Virago's book, which cracked me up because I saw the title before I realized it was her book, and thought, "oooh! that looks really cool!" - then picked it up and realized, well, OF COURSE it's cool). I've mostly made my peace with my choice to ditch academia, but it still depresses me slightly to see books coming out by people who finished their degrees well after me. (I'm thrilled for them, etc. etc. etc., but I'm also a petty envious sort who is depressed when other people get things I wanted to have. Unsurprisingly, I am also the queen of Schadenfreude. I'm not proud of this, but sometimes the whole scrambling-for-prestige aspect of academia really does feel like a zero-sum game. When someone I consider sort of a peer produces a book, it really does feel like it diminishes my accomplishments, because I should have produced a book by now, too. Of course, I also realize that if I'd taken all the time I've spent pondering the intricacies of the prestige hierarchy in academia and used it instead to write/publish, I'd be higher up that hierarchy by now, so perhaps it's time to drop this subject.)
     
• I did, however, regularly cruise by the Scholar's Choice stall, because they always put out bowls of Jelly Bellies. These are a great source of sustenance in the trough between meals.

So there you go - my self-indulgent and relatively-scholarship-free RBOKalamazoo. And now I have tp finish grading some stragglers from earlier assignments - I've been reading so many posts about people slogging through final grades that I keep thinking that's what I'm doing, too, then have to remind myself that I still have a week and a half of classes left to go!

Comments

[Janice]

Hey, it was great to see you there and even if there aren't any or many more history conferences in your future, I am sure we'll meet up again.

That bit about bias was brilliant! I very rarely use that word for precisely those reasons and it was so heartening to hear that articulated clearly and purposefully (with widespread agreement around the room). I'm going to adapt some of that insight for when I teach the historical approaches course for our majors next January.

I have also discovered the way to beef up your audience for an early Sunday panel: have your presenters carpool! We had four more people in the audience than we might have had by virtue of the fact they were driving home with the panelists.

[Dr. Virago]

though I did see Dr. Virago's book, which cracked me up because I saw the title before I realized it was her book, and thought, "oooh! that looks really cool!" - then picked it up and realized, well, OF COURSE it's cool

Te-hee! Thanks!

Sunday panels are weird. Sometimes they have great crowds -- and yes, the carpooling thing helps with that! -- and sometimes they have squat. I went to a Sunday 10:30 session in which a prominent star was speaking and there were 6 people in the audience, plus the presider.

Speaking of audiences, I wonder if anyone showed up to our canceled but seemingly not canceled panel. I was very bad and didn't swing by to make sure people knew -- did you?

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Oh, crap, I completely forgot! Oops. Um, oh well!

[Another Damned Medievalist]

And still, you guys couldn't make brunch! ECC and I went back to our rooms (after I picked up my $132 worth of book -- yep, I didn't make it past OUP, because I couldn't afford anything else after that -- and it was 50% off!) and we went (on Mother's Day, mind you) to a place that is becoming my favourite breakfast spot in K'zoo -- a little diner around the corner from the Rad, where they do breakfasts really late. And they have an awesome line cook -- the guy knows how to get eggs over medium so that the whites are done, but the yolks are still kinda runny. Plus the waiter is really nice, and brings extra hot water and tea bags. I've been there for pre-flight brunch twice now, and it's just perfect for those awful travel days.

[The History Enthusiast]

That comment about bias was spot on! I totally agree one hundred percent.

I hope that law school works out for you, and that you have a smooth transition out of academia.

[Neogrammarian]

That's a good point re: flights & Sunday attendance- do we know if the organizers are planning on shifting anything on account of difficulty making Sunday sessions? At least until (if?) the airlines work themselves out of the hole they dug for themselves?

(lol at least send 'round a notice to the Sunday presenters about local charter flight services, you know? Clubbing together, it might make a late Sunday-Detroit run more financially doable than a hotel.)