And so.
It’s been a while since I last posted, largely because I was buried under a mound of stress from a conference that I was working, and then sleeping a massive amount trying to recover from the experience. I took Monday off and spent the entire day, I am not ashamed to say, buried in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
The conference was in honor of a long time faculty member who passed away last year, and I dare say that many of the personalities involved were quite accommodating and very low-key. This was not the case with all of them, unfortunately. I already ranted about the difficulties of Professors A, B, and C, and the drama kept on coming–at some points more visible than others.
Professor C deigned to show up only for her own panel.
You will recall that Professor C, whose sole raison d’etre is to make certain that people know that she’s in the room, and I had been at sparring odds rather frequently because she added herself to the conference program somewhat late in the game and would, when confronted with outdated publicity that did not list her, send me a caustic message inquiring whether she was no longer speaking and had not been informed of this.
The last occurrence of this was on Wednesday when the university-wide events bulletin was sent out and it did not list her specifically as a speaker. It did not list any of the other 19 people on the program (it simply mentioned that the conference was taking place and gave the location and link for more information) however, this was completely irrelevant as the only person Professor C would have deemed worthy of mention was herself. I may have sworn out loud in front of 35 or so high school students that I was hosting at the time when I saw the message — it’s all a bit hazy to me now.
When I briefed the panelists that we had discovered in the previous panel that the table microphones were extremely sensitive and that they would be best left in place, she piped up to make certain that I knew she was short. (…. I don’t, either.) As she was the third speaker on the panel, she took the time of the previous speaker to leave the dais and go somewhere else for 15 minutes. And when I say left, I mean with clanking chairs and fumbling about for her handbag such that her co-panelist actually paused. God knows where she went, but I assure you that even in academe, this is not terribly acceptable behavior. One does not leave one’s own panel unless a) there are visible signs of seepage and b) we are already to questions.
Finally, we arrived at the time that Professor C was to give her paper. I was, all things considered, eagerly awaiting this — for all the wrong reasons, naturally (or all the right ones, depending on your perspective). I wasn’t disappointed.
Despite the fact that the conference was given in honor of a professor who had passed, those of us on the organizing committee knew full well that she (the late professor) would have considered it a phenomenal waste of time for people to gather and talk about how great she was (which she was, for the record). So, we had made a conscious decision to get people together, but for the purpose of talking about the fields in which she worked and presenting original pieces of research that moved the scholarship forward.
So, when Professor C spent the first 20 minutes of her alotted 20 minute presentation time rehashing our late professor’s career and works to a room full of people who had been part of said career and works … well, it was a little funny. I particularly enjoyed her lavish fawning over a book that our late colleague had co-edited because, had Professor C attended any of the prior events, she would have known that a) the co-editor was sitting right in front of her and b) that she was mispronouncing the co-editor’s name (and badly).
She then spent the last 10 minutes of her 20 minute presentation recapping her own book (now 9 years old) and actively ignoring the panel chair’s attempts to cut her off.
None of the questions were directed to her. So sad.
That evening, I got a little toasty over the reception which is why I was a bit surprised to discover that I was hosting the entire slate of guests for dinner at a nearby restaurant because none of the rest of the organizing committee decided they wanted to go. This in itself would have been fine had not Professor A spent the entire reception inviting people to attend because “we have plenty of room,” whereupon 32 people showed up for the private room that we had reserved based on the fact that Professor A had assured everyone that we would not exceed 25 attendees. Things got awkward. There was drinking.
And Professor E, who I know slightly and may have mocked on occasion for her astoundingly fake and inconsistent British accent but is, all things considered, a nice person and a phenomenally gracious hostess, saved my ass by rising to the occasion and delivering a knock-out of a toast that totally removed the awkward feeling from everyone else and got spirits flowing and the good times rolling, and I take back everything snide I’ve ever said about her and then some. Hell, I’ll start speaking with a Welsh accent if it’ll get me down that road of social ease.
And so, I have lived through the experience, am starting to recover, and am even happier not to be going out of town today like I was originally supposed to. All things considered, things could have gone much worse.
Now it’s time to refocus and direct my energies to that which I have neglected, including this blog.
And yes, children, I do know where the hidden “strange relic” is located on level 6. And I’m not telling 
