My conference accommodation which they claimed was a hotel on campus was really a 'done up' halls of residence. We did get en suite rooms, but we also got halls-sized single beds (about 2/3 the size of an ordinary single), a grotty old wardrobe, a desk with a lamp, a chair, and central heating over which we had absolutely no control.
Sound familiar?
One night - having taken ages to get to sleep because it was so hot due to the heating over which I had no control - I was woken by a very loud siren. A little disorientated, I initially thought it was the alarm clock in the room and I tried to turn it off, but when I had woken up properly, I discovered it was, in fact, the fire alarm. I got out of bed, put on my jeans and shoes which I had put on the chair (I don't remember consciously laying them out for speedy dressing, but I think I had subconsciously slipped back into 'living in halls' mode, and we had so many fire alarms that I got in the habit of doing that) grabbed a cardigan and left the building.
Postgrad students, TAs, lecturers, senior lecturers and big named professors all standing outside at 2am in their pyjamas is a great levelling experience. Some with no cardigan / coat, some with no shoes etc - but 60% of them were clutching laptops to their chest. In the middle of the night, the fire alarm sounds and the very first thing they thought of was picking up their work.
So I wonder, does it make me a bad academic that I can honestly say that had I taken my laptop to the conference, I would have left it in my room?
[In case anyone is concerned, there was no fire - false alarm]
5 comments:
Every time there has been a fire alarm in the office (and there have been many) I have taken my laptop with me (admittedly this hasn't included any 2am incidents). Aside from the family, of course, it would be the first thing I would grab were there to be the threat of a conflagration at home. Does that make me a bad person?
I have to admit that though I'm not sure it'd be for work reasons, the first thing I'd take in a fire is my laptop. It's possibly quite a sad admission by my life is on this thing! I have 40gb of music, probably *at least* 100gb of movies and TV shows, not to mention all the photographs on here. That lot, I'd save. The work's on a pen drive and on online storage! Aside from all of that, my MacBook is very beautiful and therefore too pretty to die!
Agreed with PhDLitChick that this is as much about the centrality of the laptop to our lives as *just* the work. I grab my laptop at fire alarms too, partially because if there IS a fire, that's my kernel for starting over with insurance records, credit cards, photos, music, etc----eg, with laptop, I could rebuild my life from a hotel room. Without it, chaos! Although the work is a lot of it. And vacations are defined by taking the laptop or not taking the laptop.
Mosca - no, not a bad person. You did put family first!
PhDLitChick and Dance - I suspect this is the difference. With the exception of one or two photos, I don't keep my life on my laptop. I still live in the old-fashioned world of cameras with film in them, and music on CDs.
And I think I might feel differently when I have some new research on it.
I straddle those worlds - I still have hard copies of photographs and I still have physical DVDs and CDs, but I've also got them all on here. Just as backing up your work elsewhere and not entrusting it all to your computer's (fallible) hard drive is an essential thing which we all do, so with music and other perishables. I've got my entire CD collection on my iTunes, and much more besides. As I said, I've also got DVDs and photos etc stored on my computer (though the pics are copied to online storage too). So, in a fire, while the CDs melt and the photos disappear in a tiny puff of smoke, I can run from the blaze with a single object under my arm, knowing that on it are all those important things that you hold dear - including work! Though, if I was particularly desperate and for some reason could not locate my laptop to grab it first, I'd then grab my external hard drive, onto which is copied absolutely everything that is on my computer - back up, back up, back up.....it's an important mantra!
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