Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The Idea of the Conference

Like many budding young compositionists seeking to bolster their vitae, network, and develop professionally, I want to attend national conferences.  Local conferences are cool, but you probably already know a variety of people there.  That has been my limited experience.  Plus, there is something very different about the idea of going to a national conference.  It looms like a challenge: thousands of people in one location talking about what I do.  What you do.  What we do which defines who we are as professionals.  And almost everyone there knows more than I do!  Can I pull off being a colleague?  Or will they ship me out, a mere fifteen minutes after arrival, with FRAUD tattooed across my forehead?  A bit dramatic, sure, but presenting at a national gig for the first time feels a bit like an intellectual debutante ball where the newest members of “society” are coached so they do not trip and fall down the stairs.  The idea of attending a conference, in and of itself, simultaneously haunts and enlightens.

The “idea” of a national conference is one of the things that makes conferences so important.  I often think that many people are more hung up on the idea of the conference—what it will mean, how it will look, how they can afford it—than what will actually take place there.  Similarly, I suspect that job committees reviewing vitae and job applications rarely ask, “I wonder just what Ms. Applicant with a two-month wet Ph.D. learned at the CCCCs in New Orleans last year?” Instead, I suspect they scan the conferences looking for breadth, depth, and types of presentations.  (Hiring committee folks: please correct my assumptions here if they are off.) Confession time: I read other people’s vitae.  I do, even though I am not on a hiring committee.  Then I cry myself to sleep.  Not really, but I do look at their conferences, presentations, papers, and so on.

I review other people’s vitae for several reasons.  First, I like to follow successful paths instead of attempting to blunder up my own path through blackberry patches of self-absorption and ignorance.  I want to be like them—people with good CVs.  Second, I am interested in formatting and the numerous variations CVs take.  Third, I love learning how my colleagues recycle their interests and papers from one conference into another conference.  Sometimes they are honing their papers.  Other times they are taking and making various riffs on a subject.  And still other times they are trotting the papers out to get one more hit on the vita.  As my students say, “That’s all good.” Reading vitae inform me about the genre and how it is performed in my profession.

Such activities as reading vitae—whether for professional development or hiring for a position—reduce the event known as the conference to the idea of the conference.  For many newbies like me, the idea of the conference is more intimidating because of all the potential meanings and applications.  Let’s get basic for a moment.  A conference only lasts two to five days.  There is little chance that any two to five day period is going to completely alter the future or nature of anyone’s life.  Very little chance.  However, the power and meaning we give to that period of time impacts how we see ourselves that week, month, year, or even decade.

My pops taught botany for over thirty years.  He still goes to conferences, and yet he’s been retired for several years.  Why?  Because he’s interested in the material.  He’s still involved in his field because he wants to be—he likes working with his colleagues, and he loves learning.  Who wouldn’t be proud of an academic dad like that?  For my father, attending conferences was not just a single event—like a two week diet or a weekend at Esalen—but a way of life.  Conferences and papers were part of the master plan, but they were not the whole plan.  They did not make or break his career; rather they were an integral part of it.

If we regard writing papers, attending conferences, and so on, not as single and vital events that can make or break us, but rather as a professional lifestyle—conferences and publication are simply one aspect of what we do—it can reduce a lot of stress.  It helps keep things in perspective.  And, I suspect, the more conferences we attend, the less stressed we will be about these events.

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