Thursday 16 July 2009

Is someone trying to tell me something?

Last night, I dreamed that the university to which I was attached (in the dream - it wasn't a university I recognise from my waking life, so I don't know what position I had there) had moved me into a different office. Without telling me. I had to ask a friend (one I did recognise from my waking life, but whom I have not seen for some time) where my stuff was and why I'd been moved. He didn't know why, but took me to what can only be described as a cupboard with bookshelves and a chair, where I found that all of my boxfiles of printed off articles, notes and my own work had been drenched in a large scale leak. I tried to get them out to dry them, but couldn't do it quickly enough; there was no space to spread them out and suddenly there was no one there to help.

Oh dear.

Monday 13 July 2009

In case of emergency, take laptop

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]

Saturday 11 July 2009

An Imposter

Earlier this week I went to a large conference of early modernists. It's the first conference at which I've given a paper in a few years, and I was very nervous about it. I know many academics have fears of being revealed as frauds at these things (imposter syndrome) - even if they really do know their stuff - but I've not done much in the way of my own research for quite some time, and I was convinced everyone would be able to tell. I felt like an interloper at this gathering of early modernists. Most of my teaching recently (and research for lectures) has been on topics much more modern.

I sat through the conference, listening to lots of other academics whose paper were clear and impressively constructed. My paper was in the penultimate panel, so I spent much of the conference worrying that my paper wasn't as good, that I'd never be able to answer that sort of question, that I'd forgotten everything I used to know around the topic on which I was speaking (I took the paper from a chapter of my thesis), etc. Thankfully, the paper went well, so I think I got away with it.

I also met someone else who is working on the same parliamentary bill (in a different context) as I discussed in my paper - we plan to share work on this when we have written the articles. I'm planning to, no, going to turn this paper into a journal article. And then I'm going to start on a book proposal based on the thesis and / or a new article from scratch. That way at the next conference, I'll still worry about being exposed as knowing nothing, but I'll at least have some new research to discuss so that I can trick other conference delegates into thinking that I do know something.