There's been a scholarly conference in town this week. Although I didn't submit something to present, I signed up to attend because I'd been feeling like this dissertation from afar was leaving me without scholarly camraderie.
I've gotta say it's been really nice to sit in a room full of people who like the kinds of things I like and listen to them say intelligent things (and even get up the nerve to ask a (hopefully) intelligent question!)
But I also found myself distracted and annoyed at times.
Does it make me a bad scholar if my mind wanders during a particularly uninteresting presentation? Or am I only a bad scholar if in my wandering I ponder the next hockey game?
Am I just picky, or should I be annoyed that the person reading his paper at the front of the room is pausing to pick up his pen and make numerous grammatical corrections to it as he reads? I don't really mind the occasional tick in the margin, but if you're correcting three or four errors per page, I get the feeling you don't think the session is very important to you, and then I wonder why I'm taking the time to come listen to you!
And I've discovered, or solidified, a conference peeve - film scholars who can't be bothered to calculate that the five minute clip plus five minutes of fumbling with the technology actually adds ten minutes to their fifteen minute presentation. Especially when all four of them do it!
When you think of it, some of the things these very intelligent people do are really rather funny... but not in the ha-ha kind of way.
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