S1E3: Academic Grifters

Hello, and welcome to unpack this where academic misfits unload their baggage. Uh, you’ll hear our tagline changing week to week as we figure out what works best. Uh, you can give us some feedback along those lines too, if you’re interested. So this week’s episode, episode three is, uh, titled academic Grifters, where we’ll be talking about academic conferences.

And actually my co-hosts Constance is the one who introduced the title. So I’m going to let her lead us in with why this title and why we’re talking about conferences at all.

Hey, thank you. So I am Constance Bailey, as I often say the other half of this dynamic duo. So yeah, I proposed academic Grifters. Well, actually I think I didn’t specifically propose it initially in reference to conferences. So I should clarify, but I thought, well, it’s probably appropriate. And the reason I thought that is because sometimes it may just depend on the volume of conferences you have.

Yeah. Sometimes the cost of conferences seems excessive. And, you might say to yourself, where does all this money go? Why are they so freaking expensive? So I think it depends on, and these are some, distinctions that we will probably make throughout the show where you are in your academic career, early stage, what type of conference, if it’s regional national local, that sort of thing, but certainly.

I think I’m also thinking about from the graduate student perspective, I remember thinking, oh my gosh, it’s going to be ridiculously expensive to go to MLA, to get, to do an interview for a job that I may or may not get. And I make like below the federal poverty level. So it just felt really from that perspective, that seemed like an academic grift, but, one of the things that I do want to say, and I think that Jo and I both, staunchly agree on is that.

In the end, if you can, right the benefits, if you do a cost benefit analysis, I guess maybe if you’re that type of person that the benefits, I think outweigh the costs for us, but they can be , they can seem costly. I know as graduate students, there are ways and even, yeah.

Not as great students, as, junior scholars or, once you get a kind of conference crew, right at conference clique, there are some regulars and some people that you probably see consistently and that, you know, well, even from grad school or just professional networking.

And so when you do that, You can probably find ways to reduce costs in terms of, sharing, transportation costs to, and from airports sharing room costs. I think there are lots of things that you can do to reduce the cost. But in terms of like the membership and the conference fees, you get a lot with that.

Right. And in some conferences you can’t publish without membership in that particular organization. So. I think we’re not planning to, I don’t think we had planned to do like an itemized line by line here or the conference costs. But what I would say is that, if you can the experience of the professional presentation, the networking, and in some cases, just the fun,

Which academics need to have, and that is a thing. So for me, I weigh in that it’s not ultimately an academic grift, but I just thought the title was kind of catchy

I’m I’m glad that we’re talking about this. I think something that strikes me in our friendship is that we have. I am very much an introvert. I mean, I’m an extrovert introvert and that I, I am okay at peopling when I have to, but that people take energy out of me. And based on my experience, uh, constants can correct me if my representation isn’t accurate, but isn’t low based on my experience.

You are more extroverted than I am in that you seem to get a lot more energy from people than I do. So. My, uh, experience of conferences might be a little different. I love them now, actually, uh, in, in that you have to develop a conference click, you have to sort of feel, find your rhythm and find what it is that you enjoy doing and conference spaces.

But. As a graduate student, I think I only went to one. Um, so, and, and I mean, one major one, and that had largely to do with costs that the fact that these are very expensive to attend, they take place in major cities, which means that the hotels are very expensive. The flights, uh, out of where I was going to graduate school, which is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere were very expensive.

Um, conference clothes, all of that. Also, I just having come into this sideways, not thinking that I was going to be an academic, I. I didn’t have any training into what this was. You know, people went to conferences and it, it sounded like this professional thing that people did, but I didn’t actually know what the goal was other than to have been there and to say you’ve been there.

So it took me a while to find my footing. And, and so I say that I’m glad we were talking about this because one of our goals in informing this podcast was to sort of. Walk through our journeys here that in a way that might, uh, hopefully be a little bit of help for someone else who might be in similar related positions, but also like prompt us to think through as members of this profession, you know, what parts of this genre are alienating or confusing or hazing, uh, for people who might not have been acculturated into what this world is.

Uh, so, so you say that conferences are definitely worthwhile, so maybe it’s worth telling our audience what you find particularly valuable about.

Yeah. So, so to, to respond to your earlier observation, I am the more extroverted of the two of us, for sure. People can probably tell that like, my personality is, is big, but, but I would say that we’re the opposite. Like, you know, you’re an extroverted introvert and I think that. Introverted extrovert. So I, so I have, you know, everybody sometimes have, has tendencies of both, right?

I think, and so conferences can be exhausting, right. Even if you’re an extrovert and the performance of one’s identity at a conference can be a lot, even for someone like me. So I should say, you know, that. Uh, you know, for a while, when I did conferences, I did them in, I did, I did my presentation and I went to my friend’s presentation and that was it.

And I enjoyed whatever city it was in. Right. So that was, that was a lot of it as a graduate student, especially. And so I kind of started the conference circuit early in the sense that I started conferences as an undergrad. And because I had gone through, uh, the. McNair program, which is a federal trio program.

We could, I could talk about that and unpack that in a whole other episode, but it’s been really great for increasing minority representation, uh, in graduate school. First-generation, um, doctoral candidates and groups that are underrepresented in graduate education were, or are eligible for the McNair program.

And so I was not a first generation college student. But thankfully I was a black woman. So then that will, you know, many, I think pretty much every racial and ethnic minority will fall into that category, but certainly, um, women trans non non-binary scholars, you know, lots of people will fall into that underrepresented in graduate education.

If you’re not a white man. And the nice thing about the McNair. Program was that a was named Dr. Ronald E McNair, who was a scholar. And, um, I would like to say physicist, but I better double check that, but he was an astronaut. Right. And so, um, He, uh, you know, was, was very, you know, adamant and, and, you know, just a supporter of advanced education for minority scholars.

And so it’s, it’s really great because it pairs undergrads with a faculty mentor. I did not have, uh, a mentor at the small institution that I attended historically, black college Alcorn state university wonderful institution. Didn’t have enough faculty to really. To, to, to do the kind of extensive mentoring that you would like to prepare students for graduate school.

So I attended a summer research at the university of Mississippi and I was paired with a wonderful scholar who introduced me to some of Morrison and Hurston’s less known works and just, it was a wonderful research summer. And the benefit of that was that it was an ongoing relationship. So the McNair.

Program sent me on conferences as an undergrad. So I got to, you know, leave rural Mississippi and go to Penn state, which I think actually you matriculated at. I went to Boston for a conference. I went somewhere else, Texas for a conference, I went a lot of places. We essentially just presented our research project, which was a conference lengthpaper.

But for, you know, an undergrad who had not been exposed to a PhD, that was a lot. I mean, that’s, this is just basically what people do at conferences, but it was primarily comprised of McNair scholars. Uh, but a lot of McNair scholars were in the, were in stem fields. So, you know, like it wasn’t necessarily that.

These are all people in the way that like now our conferences are all basically people that do a lot of what we do. It was interesting because there were different, you know, types of, of scholars that we encountered. So anyway, so that was my like kind of introduction into conference life. And that was like kind of a long rambling introduction where I didn’t do the McNair program justice to talk about all of the amazing aspects of it, but it was really wonderful in terms of introducing me to.

What does it mean to go to an, you know, an academic conference? And I got that experience pretty early in my academic career. What about you? What was your first conference or.

I’m not sure I knew that conferences existed in undergrad. So I just, the two step way back for a second, you know, I was constantly saying this is a site where academics present on their research. So you can submit to conferences in different ways. You can submit an individual paper and then the organizers, if they think it’s a good fit, they’ll match. What they think might be related papers. And sometimes you’re just like in the miscellany pile and with other random papers and you all present together in a conversation, or the way that I found that’s actually more fun is when you put together a panel and you intentionally arrange those pieces and conversation.

Um, and then you talk about the interrelations of your work. So. So at its best, I like to talk about what academic genres are in the ideal world that at its best academic conferences are really wonderful for exploring ideas that you’re working on for finding other people interested in working on those ideas.

Um, and I, and I found that eventually, but one of the struggles, I think at least for the major conferences in my field is. Until people know who you are, or you’re on a panel with people who know, who are you, who you are sometimes you’re, you’re in that panel presentation room where the audience is like your friend and the friends of a couple of other people who are on the panel, you know?

Um, so the conversation doesn’t really feel very generative or.

energetic in that way. And I wish that weren’t the case. You know, I wish that more senior scholars would have the time and energy in their lives to attend. Panels by more junior peoples that the conversations could actually be generated in that way.

But otherwise I know for at least a lot of the, my, um, classmates in grad school, it felt like a thing that we did did, like say that we went to get that line in our CV, but the conversation itself wasn’t as generative as it, as it could have been. Um, so, so Yeah, that, those were my early conference experiences.

And because of that, because I didn’t think I was going to be an academic because most of my social circles weren’t in academia. It felt, it was kind of just like a lonely experience. I just went to the place, gave a paper and went back to my hotel room, walked around the city. And eventually, you know, my life shifted, it wound up being in this profession.

Now my closest friends are also academics and this is. Time. I get to see a lot of my friends and so becomes like this great reunion type events where you’re trying to balance all your social events with the actual giving of papers. Um, but it, it was a, it was a gradual shift and I’m not sure what to do with the fact that it is, it can be really alienating at the beginning when you don’t really know anyone.

And when you know, there’s this whole thing. Built on reputation. And when you’re somebody who nobody else knows, you’re just kind of like this lonely little grad student floating around the conference room.

Yeah, that’s a really good point. I mean, so actually I should backtrack. So one of the reasons I wanted to record this as one of our early episodes had to do with the timeliness of a CFP, which is a call for papers, that one of my major conferences is issuing. And so. Too. We don’t, we don’t know like our publishing schedule.

Right. We have these grandiose plans, like we’re going to edit it, we’re going to do these things. And we’re going to release these, like, you know, this amazing trifecta of episodes. And we have no clue. Right. But in theory, right. I was thinking, oh, if we release our episodes in early October, then you know, this.

This, uh, episode will come out and people will hear it. You know, like our, this massive audience that we’ve established, we’ll hear it by, you know, October 15th, which is the deadline. But, um, so CLA college language association has a call. The abstract is rage, resistance, and response. Annual meetings will be in the spring in April, in Atlanta.

We hope if not, it’ll be an amazing virtual meeting, but that remains to be seen. And I think at some point we’ll have a recurring segment where we talk about all of these amid there’s so many amazing conferences that I wish one that I could attend. And two that I could talk about, but we won’t, you know, try to do all that today because that would be extremely overambitious.

But this idea that it’s like a reunion, right? The only time. You get to see a lot of your good personal and professional friends is at a conference because our careers have taken that taken us in very different places, you know, over the years. And you know, we can come together. Yeah, discuss our scholarship.

Try to have social interactions, do try to do all the things. And in three or four or five days, for me, it’s especially challenging because, um, pre COVID of course I would have to secure a childcare for. You know, multiple days. And so that actually added to the expense. That’s the other reason I was like, man, this is an academic grift because on the one hand you can get, oftentimes the academics can get funding to cover, you know, the, not always, but at some of our institutions and, you know, we have funds to, to cover, uh, attending, you know, maybe one or two professional meetings depending on your, your university’s budget.

But all the additional things, right? Like childcare and. And other additional life things

Pet

have to

care on this end.

Yes, that’s right. It’s pet boarding or elder care or whatever the case may be that doesn’t get covered. Um, and so I think that it makes you know, that it increases the. Yeah.

The likelihood that, you know, one of the things that I’ve appreciated about the zoom conferences, even though we’re all zoomed to death and sort of tired of them that they have equalize the playing field to some degree, because they’re folks who are able to attend who have otherwise not been able to attend.

So I think that’s been one of the nice advantages of COVID conferences as I’m going to call them. But yeah.

I really love that you brought this up because I, I feel like it’s something we have to address because academics are currently spinning out about, you know, the fact of the conferences have been largely online for a year. And what does that mean for the continued, uh, For the future of this genre of academic meeting.

And I think one of the things that is a struggle for academic conferences is that we pack a lot of different things into this genre that. Maybe don’t need to be all in the same thing. So like a lot of us treat this as the reunion with our friends and that you do need to physically, you do want to physically be in that place with those people, but that does not necessarily have to be tethered to the forms of professionalization that the conferences offer that are really important to structurally marginalized scholars, to people who might not have the funds to travel, to graduate students.

Um, and so thinking about how. Distribute these different activities so that the professionalization opportunities can be more readily accessible to people who particularly need them. And so that not, I mean, you know, we’re not all adding to climate change with the amount of time that we spend on airplanes.

Um, just, just thinking differently about this, not to say that physical in-person gatherings should be altogether gone for academics, but that we should be thinking about. Them differently and about a variety of ways of interacting that aren’t necessarily all staked on this one big event each year per organization.

Yeah, those are really good points that you, that you mentioned. And I’m really glad that you mentioned that. I, I, yeah, it does sometimes feel a little bit, um, you know, socially irresponsible to be the amount of, you know, costs and. Energy we consume, attending conferences, as I’ve said, I still do think the good outweighs the bad, but that’s definitely something to think about.

And one of the advantages to, the way that conferences have had to reimagine themselves in, in this COVID. You know, reality that we are still, you know, still plagued with. I think, you know, one thing that we haven’t talked about, and I don’t know about enough because I know that there will be other occasions where we will talk about, I think we have maybe a Peerless or review episode plan, but I do think, you know, The nice thing about some conferences.

And again, there, there is this sense that you want to strike a balance where you’re attending a conference, such that you can, you know, expose your research to a broader audience. And hopefully there will be, you know, some scholars in your field, some senior scholars in your field. And, but also, you know, for junior scholars, there is a balancing act that we have to strike, which I am literally trying to start as we speak.

But between choosing a conference that will allow you to, you know, that will provide you professionalization opportunities, allow you to network, you know, maybe even have some fun. And those that will sort of get you name recognition because there is this sense that to get tenure, you have to have a reputation in the field or that you have to be contributing scholarship that people recognize as being sort of valid and contributing and, and ways that feel.

I think sometimes for those of us who are introverts or with introvert tendencies, it feels very. Oh, I don’t know. I’m not trying to say performative, like the scholarship is not performative, but the way in which you have to mark almost market oneself right and sort of put yourself out there in a way that like, even for someone like me, who’s an extrovert.

It feels sometimes very. I don’t know, like, I, I feel like I’m having to strategically be at this thing so that hopefully I can rub elbows with the same, this guy there, there’s a certain amount of artifice that is involved. That feels contrived maybe for lack of a better word.

But the cult of personality that orbits around particular figures in particular fields, I think is, is not necessarily. Conducive to the forms of open conversation that our scholarship, uh, wants to be based on, I guess. Um, and, and I agree with that. Uh, and I I’m glad you said networking because I feel like that’s a topic we should address when it comes to this.

It’s. I as an extroverted introvert, I have an odd sort of relationship to networking in that I really love having conversations. Like my, my favorite part about this job is that I get to just talk about smart things that I think are important with really brilliant humans and explore those ideas.

 

 

So when I was first told that networking was important, it was still something, it was just something I didn’t do. It felt like something I should do.

It felt like one of those things that every tells you, oh, this is what you should be doing to be getting a job or to be being professional. And I just didn’t because I. There were these important people that I wanted to meet, but I didn’t know what to say to them. So I didn’t go up to them. And I know that there are other people who are much more, um, forward than me or proactive in that way, who, who really didn’t do that.

And some people have built great relationships out of that, but for me, the most meaningful relationships I’ve made in this field came out of sort of more organic circumstances. So that’s actually where I I’ve found that smaller conferences are really helpful. Like the big national ones have name recognition and you know, it’s good to have seen them for sure.

And to have participated in them. And sometimes, uh, you will be able to develop really great interpersonal connections there, but the smaller, like smaller organizations or the local conferences are really wonderful in that. They’re just your people, you see them multiple times and you get to engage on a much more closer interpersonal level that develop.

Uh, lasting relationships sometimes. So I really liked those for that particular.

Yeah, no, that’s a really great point. I mean, I think one of the things that is nice about our disciplinary sub fields is that if you do have to attend those big national conferences, sometimes the people working within your specialization and your specific kind of areas. You know, you still, you almost have a, still a sense of community.

It almost can have, in some ways, you know, that small conference feel, if you, if you have a breakout meetings or if you have other, you know, things, but I do think for, in terms of graduate students, because a lot of our conversations, uh, the conversations that you and I have, we’re, you know, we’re thinking about, as you said, you know, hopefully sharing our, you know, our path so that it can benefit other people.

I think, you know, for graduate students and actually. Yeah, I’m very invested in this idea of mentoring other people. So I’ve even, you know, I’ve, you know, encouraged to help undergrads, you know, write an abstract, submit for a CFP. So I took an undergrad to college language association, association meetings. The last time we met in person, I think a couple of years ago, and I’m encouraging some of my graduate students to submit.

Um, for our conference in the spring, I do think that it’s nice for them in terms of, you know, they’re not necessarily trying to, especially if you’re going from undergrad to grad but even if you’re going from master’s to considering PhD programs, you’re not necessarily trying to do that same kind of elbow rubbing, you know, you’re just getting exposed to scholarship and people who are doing what you might want to do.

Like you may have never thought about our program. UT Austin or Arkansas. And then you’re like, oh my gosh, this amazing scholar is doing this work. I never knew you knew one of the things in African-American folk, folklore, you know, inevitably someone always says like, I didn’t even know you could that, that it’s like a thing that you can do.

I didn’t know. You could write about, you know, like, Proverbial expressions or African-American comedy. And I’m like, why not? You know, like, so that, that always becomes the thing right. Where someone is interested because they, heard a conference paper, I think hearing conference paper, I mean, that’s, that is sort of an in-house thing.

Right? And so some of our, our scholarship, I think, is public facing where we do, you know, try to engage with the community. So, um, I think sometimes we get exposed to other people in that way, cause conferences, um, in some ways, Are, you know, talking to other academics, but in theory, um, sometimes we are recruiting from outside the academy or again, from people who are not sort of professional, um, like career academics and, you know, who are like yourself, who are kind of stumbling into that field.

And so, um, we were able to replicate ourselves in a, in a good way. I don’t know if that makes sense. I don’t know if that’s the way I want to describe that. It’s probably not a great analogy, but yeah.

I, I really appreciate you using the word mentoring because conferences have also been sites where I’ve experienced really great mentoring and really terrible mentoring. Um, but I guess on the off chance that folks senior to us, or even parallel with us, our listener, listening to this, um, I think a lot about how.

There aren’t enough conversations in academia about how to responsibly occupy and wield the power that you have, particularly because a lot of academics, this is a field of hazing. You know, like this profession is made to make you feel less than, and like you’re not doing enough. And overall, our world is so narrow and small.

It’s easy to feel pretty insignificant, but within that, there are varying degrees of power and influence and, uh, I don’t, I don’t know that everybody knows, you know exactly what a difference it makes when you’re actually somebody that people know when you show up for somebody who’s like new and trying.

So I remember my first, like not quite a conference, it was an Institute where we did like a workshop. I really love those settings because you’re actually working on something together as a group, but a senior scholar that I really admire. You know, it took me out to lunch when we were on a break and it was really great to have that one-on-one time with that person, um, and to develop, to have that opportunity, to develop a real relationship outside of, you know, trying to ask a question at the end of a panel or something.

Um, and, and I’ll also remember, uh, shout out to my friend Ersula Ore who’s a phenomenal scholar at Arizona state. Uh, my first time at, I think, national women’s society, uh, conference and I was in the middle of my presentation and was feeling kind of shit about it. And she walks in with her crew of graduate students and like, It was a major, I don’t know, self-esteem booster in that moment.

Right? Like somebody has shown up to see you, um, somebody whose opinion as a scholar and as a human means a lot to you. So, I mean, I know that all of us are overburdened and don’t have enough time to do any of the things on our plate. But thinking particularly for those of us who, who wield some degree of power or some degree of influence, thinking about using that in a way that can uplift others.

Yes with great power comes great responsibility. You know, I see one of, one of my fondest memories I revisit it now because you know, various, you know, life, uh, well, life in, in different academic trajectories quite honestly have, have taken us in different directions. But one of my favorite conference memories also speaks to the importance of memories.

Like one of the scholars who mentored me in graduate school, shout out to Dr. April Langley, University of Missouri and Dr. Chris Okonkwo and I actually had some wonderful mentors, even the folklore program at Mizzou, I can’t speak highly enough about the scholars there, but me and two of my best friends from grad school used to do a panel.

We would try to do it yearly at CLA and we would call ourselves CMB. It was a nod to new Jack city and the cash money brothers. They would always say, you know, we all we get. So this idea that we bonded during grad school there, we were in this white space that we perceived as hostile.

And of course, then the evidence would go on to corroborate that lots of racist incidents, Mizzou. Uh, very public ones. But so we would frame our panel with this narrative about CMB and how we of came together and we would do that and we did it at least two, maybe three consecutive years.

And I thought and hoped that we would always do that, you know? And so now we’re kind of gone in different directions but it meant so much one of our last presentations together when two of our mentors showed up to that panel and talked about how proud they were, because of course, to this, this idea of hazing, like when we were in graduate school, before we got our credentials, we definitely felt, you know, rightly or wrongly.

We might’ve been right. Who knows, but we definitely felt that we were being that there was a lot of gatekeeping in that, it felt like academic hazing, maybe it was right. But, after you’ve have, crossed right after you’ve gone through that process and, survived and you’ve made it successfully to the other side, it’s sometimes quite heartwarming or endearing

to see those senior scholars that, you know, personally, but also to your point earlier, even just people who, you know, who you, whose work you’ve admired, right. I’ve had those interactions at conferences and, and you’re right. They do mean a lot. And, and we’re in a position to also kind of replicate that process right.

As we are generating scholarship. So, it’s hard. You have to strike a balance. You know, it’s exhausting sometimes because, at once you are being mentored, but you’re also. But you’re also potentially mentoring other people. And bringing people into the field. So we want to be mindful of how we do that.

But yeah, conferences are just this interesting academic, thing, genre I guess, for lack of a better word, that attempts to do so much and. Can be quite challenging when you think about logistics and thank goodness I have not been on the planning committee, but I am on the exec board for a couple organizations, and I don’t know how the planning committee does it quite honestly. It’s daunting. Just thinking about it is overwhelming, but yeah, I think that for those of you who are able to, even if it’s just a professional conference, there’s great benefits. I think some of my fitness organizations do like a conference. I haven’t been able to but when you can go and interact and get perspectives that are different from your own, or learn about new research or new scholarship, it’s really can be a refreshing break from what can sometimes feel like the monotony of our kind of day to day, lives maybe.

I’m also for, I mean, I’m, I’m for querying as many parts of the academic experience as I, as possible. But in, in recent years, I’ve all been on. Queering, whatever panels and put together whatever interactions I have at a conferences. So none of these have been almost none of these have been straightforward.

I’m just going to keep a paper and each person’s going to give us up some paper, but they have more Roundtable elements, sometimes participatory elements, depending on the setting. Um, Having thinking about ways to open up that space as one of interaction, rather than one where you talk at people, not to say that there isn’t benefit to that too, but that we can think about different ways of engaging this space, where we’ve all come together.

Um, one of the things that one of my organizations does is that they offer micro mentoring, uh, at the conference where they’ll, um, select a few people. I was technically on this list last year, uh, who sign up to. I don’t know, an hour or two hour blocks where they sit at a table and you know, anybody who has a question broadly defined for her for a mentor can come and sit and talk about it.

And it’s not like you’re going to have the definitive answer necessarily, but it’s another opportunity to connect with somebody that isn’t, that doesn’t. The junior person, the person who’s already nervous or who doesn’t feel like they belong to go up to the senior person and be like, hi, I think you’re really cool.

Cause I had never known what to do with that sort of interaction. Right. So thinking about more organic ways of engaging with other people, since we’re all coming together in that space.

That’s pretty funny. It sounds almost like academic speed dating, but with your mentor around. Yeah, that is interesting. I am with you. the more organic conversations, you can have the better. Cause I do think you would have probably similar to this academic speeding thing where you would be like, w I don’t know what the expression is, cause I don’t date enough, but it’s like when you have that one moment and you screw it up, it be like, if I were paired with my academic mentor, where otherwise, or in my mind, I would have like Theoretical, just this best conversation.

And I would ask the most intelligent and insightful questions and they would be so impressed if I were in that, what micro mentoring, I think if I were in that setting, I would ask the stupidest ass question, like, who is this woman? Please remove her security.

Yeah, but can we normalize that, that like a lot of us walk away from internationals without other people going, Oh my God, I, that was the most ridiculous question That I could have possibly asked and I’ve wanted to talk to this person for forever, you know? Um, and I wish we could take that pressure off of that moment, because, because of that pressure, you end up with the performative question.

That’s not a question, you know,

Yes. Yes.

like if we could,

worst one. We should talk about that as a conference feature that inevitably there will be probably every single panel has it. I don’t really have a question, but yeah to normalize the awkwardness. That’s the other thing, right? I mean, What happens with the conference paper, I guess, or with other sort of professional presentations is you don’t get to see the recursive process.

Right. And so everything sounds brilliant, but in fact, there is this first, whatever, I think, where is that essay? Like the comp, I don’t know if the comp one or one essay, but it’s often using in Comps or Comps 101 or somethingor if it’s like shitty first draft or something, but when you’re on the spot and these extemporaneous

conversations happen. They are brilliant sometimes. And that’s okay. Right. I think that’s a really good takeaway, especially some of us are, I’m a socially awkward extrovert, so I have these strange and I have this, very big and usually very, hilarious sense of humor, but sometimes people don’t get it or whatever, you know?

And so it’s weird and awkward and yeah. And as you said, that’s okay.

Yeah, no, that’s, it should be accepted. Part of being anxious. We should also just say academics are weird. We are people who’ve chosen to devote our lives to the particular. I study a very particular things, you know, where we’re going to be a little eccentric and that’s going to, that’s going to engender some really wonderful conversations and also some really awkward ones.

And we’ll just have to learn to roll with that. Um, so yeah, I, I, I don’t know. Um, I don’t know. Yeah. Are there other things about conferences that we haven’t touched? Um,

Oh, I’m absolutely sure. But that’s also speaks to the nature of our lives like today is absolutely crazy. So I’m sure over the course of the podcast. You all will learn more about us than you care to know, but I don’t even know how, like the final edits, I’ve muted 20 times, and yet still there’s been crazy background, but I think we’ve shared this, right now I have a movement impairment and so. I had to do, compression socks for a few more days. But I couldn’t find my other compression socks. So I’m like sitting here with one cool looking compression sock, and one not sock.

And it’s just crazy. Life has happened in our recording. That sort of ideal time. I didn’t realize that my kids didn’t have school today. So I’m like, I’ve had 20 people open the door and like, Hey mom. And some of that will be edited. But some of it won’t. So I said all that to say that, we, I think we had some best laid plans some of that got executed and others didn’t, but one of the things that will happen is that over the course of the podcast, I hope that we will get to revisit, earlier conversations or bring out things that we miss.

Like if we are first shouting out a conference, or if there’s something coming up and we’re doing a. I dunno this week in academia or whatever regular feature we have, we can always go back and say, Hey, you know, we mentioned this thing, but we forgot to say blah-blah-blah, but I would say. to Jo’s point embrace the awkward, if you find yourself able to attend and take advantage of those, local opportunities that present themselves like on campus. And, you’d be amazed at the scholars, or just average people who are in your backyard, who you can, interact and grow from and, have some really wonderful exchanges, I think would be just one thing.

You know, site just take advantage of those opportunities that you can, because you never know what will come out of that process.

Yeah. And, I think maybe this is wisdom that might be better distributed up top for folks who are, who are very senior in the field. But it’s helpful to think about conferences as opportunities for connection rather than. Performance, um, in that there are a lot more generative that way, and it takes a lot of pressure off of the idea that you have to be absolutely brilliant in these 15 minutes that you’re standing in front of, uh, in front of the conference room.

Um, that’s not necessarily the thing that people are gonna remember. They’re gonna remember the conversations that they had with you about this work and how you’re both excited about it. Right. And that might be the relationship that gets you to a collaboration on a future article, or it might be a connection that you can reference in your future application to this program.

But then there are all sorts of ways that this might be useful. That isn’t just about performing how smart you are, because that’s just too much pressure to put on one moment for any one person and not necessarily, um, what we need this genre for.

Yeah. And yeah, just to chime in or to add to that, take them as learning opportunities as a time to not necessarily learn specific content. I think very few people probably retained. Information that they hear, but in terms of learning, more about, whatever field or discipline or thing that it is that you are doing, more about structurally, how it works, , the why it works.

Um, I think that they just can be incredible learning opportunities personally and professionally. So yeah, I would say, even if it feels like a grift, I think that, if you can rub two nickels together, and make it happen, then, go for the conference.

But also there are some close to home and virtual that don’t require that much money, maybe a little bit of time. But it’s probably worth the sacrifice.

And hopefully, hopefully those in decision-making seats have learned from this moment that we are able to create these opportunities for connection and for, um, gathering that don’t necessarily always have to be tethered to flying to New York city or, you know, big major conference hubs. I do. I think in the ideal world conferences would be spaces of play, right?

Where we can be playing with these ideas that we think are interesting and engaging with them to see where they go and to whom it takes us and how we can work together to get there. Um, and there are all sorts of ways to do that. That don’t necessarily have to tell the rest to this one historic forum that this John rhe has taken shape.

Yeah, I think that’s the thing. We’ll probably see. Right then with, various, well COVID I think has made so many things possible you can’t, we can’t do this or we can’t do that. And all of a sudden we’ve had to re-imagine and re reinvent ourselves that I think we’ll probably be transformative in terms of, the conference experience too.

I would imagine that at least I would hope right.Jo and I could ramble. All day, probably about many things and we will soon hopefully ramble about some pop culture stuff here, soon that we will unpack. We know you all are dying to hear our opinion on, on, let’s see the chair.

We need to unpack Montero. We need to unpack Donda. There are many things that we are dying to unpack. So we will have some pop culture stuff here very soon, but let us know if you have questions about conferences, comments, or whatever, you can hit us up theunpackthis podcast@gmail.com and hit us up on all of the things.

Social media. Yeah.

Yep. Thanks for tuning in till next time.