by Glen Wright
Rate My Professors could help narrow down the field. Cute academics abound in the language department, while if it is intelligence you seek, philosophy and political science is where you shall find. Steer clear of the music school if you are not a fan of elbow patches and tweed.
Science says that you should get into the sack as often as possible (more sex means fewer colds,4 not to mention that it is good exercise). There is a vast sexology literature that can help, but the best nugget of amorous advice is this: wear socks. A study on the female orgasm found that only half of participants were able to achieve orgasm without socks, but this jumped to 80% with them.5 Apparently warm and cosy feet calm the amygdala and prefrontal cortex – the brain regions responsible for anxiety and fear.
Even if you do find a mate, love might still get you in the end. Being in a relationship causes weight gain,*6 and the medical literature reports on many cases of ‘Broken Heart Syndrome’. One case report discusses a 70-year-old woman with no prior heart problems who collapsed in hospital after being informed that her husband of 45 years had died.7 While this is the stuff of urban legend, the jury is still out on the causal link.8
#ElsevierValentines9
• Roses are red, Violets are blue, Copyright is ours.
• Roses are red, Dollars are green, Scientists’ free work, Keeps our profits obscene.
• Roses are red, Violets are blue, Please give me your heart, So I can sell it back to you.
Figure 16: Academic Valentine
Notes
For the love of trees, I have opted to keep this bibliography (relatively) short. For more details, please go to AcademiaObscura.com/buffalo, where I plan to concoct a multimedia extravaganza containing links, photos, and videos. If I get distracted and don’t get around to doing this (highly likely), I will at the very least provide full references and PDFs (where I can do so legally).
* Best not start dating during your PhD, then.
* Though this is according to research commissioned by a dieting company and reported by the Daily Mail. I’ll say no more.
1 Russell, ‘UCLA Loneliness Scale, Version 3’ (1996) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
2 Harris, ‘Risk of Depression Influenced by Quality of Relationships, U-M Research Says’ (2013) The University Record Online.
3 Spielmann et al., ‘Settling for Less out of Fear of Being Single’ (2013) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
4 Urbani, ‘Can Regular Sex Ward off Colds and Flu?’ (1999) New Scientist.
5 Roberts, ‘Scan Spots Women Faking Orgasms’ (2005) BBC.
6 Innes, ‘Why Falling in Love Makes You FAT: Two-Thirds of Couples Put on Two Stone after Getting into a Relationship’ (2013) Daily Mail Online.
7 Brandspiegel et al., ‘A Broken Heart’ (1998) Circulation.
8 Stroebe, ‘The Broken Heart Phenomenon: An Examination of the Mortality of Bereavement’ (1994) Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology.
9 Tweets by: Sylvain Deville (@DevilleSy); Tom Rhys Marshall (@TomRhysMarshall); Jon Tennant (@Protohedgehog).
An academic conference can be anything from a small and collegial meeting of minds in a quiet campus block, to a grandiose affair involving thousands of participants and spanning multiple days and venues.
Irrespective of size, the unifying certainty of academic conferences is the ubiquitous panel discussion. At some point, presumably at a conference on conferences, it was decided that the standard format for an academic conference would be the panel discussion. ISO standard 3103 defines an academic panel as a parade of three to four speakers taking it in turns to read from their PowerPoint presentations, followed by questions from the otherwise bored-to-tears audience.*
Custom dictates that the majority of panels feature only male speakers;♀1 that slides should be overfilled, illegible, and written by the speaker on the way to the conference; and that audience questions should actually be long-winded comments unrelated to the speaker’s presentation (and/or thinly veiled resentment at the questioner not having been invited to sit on the panel themselves). It is also customary for the chair of each panel to abdicate all responsibility for timekeeping, such that the coffee breaks and lunchtime (the bit that I find most interesting and productive) get condensed into a vanishingly small time slot. There must be a better way,* but, for the moment, the panel reigns supreme.
As the conference itself is unlikely to be a life-changing experience, there is only one question to ask yourself before deciding whether to go: Where is it? This is no doubt why a great many conferences seem to take place in holiday spots that seem otherwise unrelated to the conference topic. Why go to a symposium to give a presentation when you can go to a skiposium for a presencation?2
If you are looking for a grant-funded getaway, the Academic Organization for Advancement of Strategic and International Studies (OASIS) may be a good place to start. Its website says that it is an ‘Association of dedicated professionals, who willingly devote their capabilities in an ethical way for the betterment of our local communities and the society in general.3 Yet the organisation’s name,† logo (palm trees), and website (which opens with a picture of some generic beach city) belies this mission. The organisation supposedly publishes a few open access journals,‡ and organised six conferences in 2015: Miami Beach, Key West, Paris, Bangkok, Orlando, and Las Vegas.
If resorts and gambling havens aren’t your preference, you can always find conferences in more compelling locations. I asked academic Twitter where the best or weirdest places they’d been to conferences were, and the range of responses had something for all tastes:4
• ‘Sorrento or Prague for the sweetest, most beautiful. Fargo, ND for the . . . opposite’.*
• Halfway up an active volcano.
• The Tower of London (for a conference on Renaissance imprisonment).
• Boiling Springs, North Carolina (‘was pretty odd’).
• In an Edwardian swimming pool (presumably empty).
• Timberline Lodge, Mount Hood, i.e. Overlook Hotel from The Shining.
• A converted Benedictine monastery (‘Definitely felt like we were getting our Umberto Eco on’).
• A half-built hotel on St Kitts that had its electricity cut mid-conference due to non-payment of their bill.
Some conference settings seem better suited to a Dalí-esque silent film. Sarah Young from University College London recounted her visit to the Annual Conference of the Slovenian Comparative Literature Association.5 The conference was held at Lipica Stud Farm in Slovenia, and the conference sessions were held in old stables surrounded by paddocks of dancing horses. The participants stayed in a desolate hotel-cum-casino on the Slovenian–Italian border. Young admits that it was a struggle to concentrate and that she was left with little recollection of some of the papers. Daniel Jagger, also from UCL, recounted the 2010 midwinter meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, which took place at Disneyland.6 ‘ Goofy & Snow White waving at scientists in the lobby was weird . . . We booked a taxi to the theme park [and] arrived in a stretch Humvee. With internal disco lights.’
SHODDY CONFERENCES
The same predatory publishers that spam our inboxes offering publications now do conferences too, trying to pass them off as legitimate academic gatherings to extract money from researchers.
I receive a handful of such requests a week, excluding those that are so spammy that they are binned by the junk filter before they even reach me. Sometimes these conferences have names that are almost indistinguishable from the names of real conferences, and often boast big names as speakers and organisers, even though these people haven’t actually agreed to participate.
Gina Kolata, writing about this parallel world of pseudo-symposia in the New York Times, highlights the example of the unfortunate scientists who paid to present at Entomology-2013, thinking they were going to Entomology 2013.7 ‘I think we were duped,’ said one of the attendees in an email to the Entomological Society. They ju
st have to hope that the department heads reading their résumés later on also fail to spot that tricky hyphen.
Disgruntled at having been taken in by a dodgy conference, one blogger shared their experience.8 The name and website of the conference created a grand impression: 24 conference organisers including high-profile scientists; 11 thematic tracks; and pictures of a big conference room. But the cracks were starting to show before the conference had even kicked off. The participants received scant information regarding logistics, and the 11 conference ‘tracks’ had been condensed into a single ‘stream’.* The resulting programme was crammed so full that there were few breaks. In spite of these early warning signs, the author of this exposé says that he ‘really wasn’t ready for the shambles that was to come’.
Highlights included:
• A conference pack consisting mostly of advertising for other conference activities (attendee list not included);
• Just two 15-minute coffee breaks and 40 minutes for lunch in a nine-hour day;
• A tiny venue, because the room shown in the brochure had been divided and the other half was being used to host another of the company’s conferences;
• A 30-minute opening ‘ceremony’ – in fact an awkward five-minute introduction from one of the keynotes who had been hastily ushered into the role; and
• Speakers going AWOL, with the organisers having no knowledge of their whereabouts (‘Before each talk, there was a hopeful appeal to the audience for the speaker to come forth and show themselves – or, as in a few cases, not.’)
There were apparently some great scientific presentations, though the disappointing overall experience was not improved by the overzealous Certificate of Recognition given to participants, in which the organisers ‘enjoy special privilege to felicitate [name] for his/her phenomenal and worthy oral presentation’. To add insult to injury, they added this academic to its list of Executive Editors (without asking, of course).
This appears to be far from an isolated incident, though few are brave enough to recount their experiences in such detail – as the author notes, it can be a bit embarrassing to admit that you were duped in this way.
It’s not just sham conferences that can be shoddy – sometimes the real deal can be just as underwhelming. So common are such occurrences that some academics got together to make a bingo card generator and turn it into a game.9 Squares include: overenthusiastic air-conditioning, coffee that breaches the Geneva Conventions, food issues, and misspelled names on conference tags.
These conferences represent the nightmare. My dream is a conference with hot tubs, popcorn machines, and WWE-style intro videos for keynote speakers.10 Failing that, I’d be happy with decent coffee, free WiFi, and the abolition of panels.
KIMPOSIUM
I’ve never been sure what exactly Kim Kardashian does (and I honestly haven’t had the inclination to find out), yet she crops up surprisingly often in academia. In November 2014 Brunel University hosted a symposium on the Kardashians (a ‘Kimposium’).11
While I am yet to be convinced of the cultural significance of Kim’s internet-breaking bottom, the famous family, it is argued, are influencing discussions of race, feminism, and beauty. Conference organiser Meredith Jones, reader in sociology and cultural studies at Brunel, told Times Higher Education:12
You may love them or hate them, but the Kardashian family must be examined . . . They may be vacuous and bland when they open their mouths, but they are also very powerful. It is silly to think this subject is not worthy of academics’ attention.
The day-long meeting included a range of talks, including ‘Kim Kardashian as the embodiment of the networked-image’, and ‘Media-Bodies: what Kim Kardashian’s vulva can teach us about contemporary life’.13
CONFERENCE ETIQUETTE
‘More of a comment than a question,’ the academic says, rising assuredly from their seat and launching into a lengthy exposition of their own recent publication and/or metaphorically ripping the speaker’s paper to pieces.
If you’ve ever attended an academic conference, this scene will likely be familiar. The presentation portion of the proceedings has finished, the microphone is passed to the floor, and an enthusiastic audience member is yearning to seize the spotlight (generally prefacing their remarks with an unnecessarily long autobiographical introduction).
Why, as Stacey Patton from the Chronicle puts it, do academics ‘risk coming off like jackasses at conference Q&A sessions?’14 Anna Post (great-great-granddaughter of famous etiquette author Emily Post) reckons those who like to show off by highlighting key lines from their CV or slipping in a few Latin or French phrases into their remarks are simply insecure: ‘People who do that are usually not the most popular people in the room,’ she opines.15 Of course not: the most popular people in the room are those with the WiFi password.
Other unbecoming behaviours commonly seen at conferences include the inevitable skirmishes for scarce plug sockets and participants showing up visibly hungover.* There is always one attendee who rolls in late, bumbles to the front row and immediately begins whispering audibly in the ear of the poor person next to them. Then their phone starts vibrating and they scramble to answer it, before scurrying to the back of the room to conduct their conversation, again in not-so-hushed tones. Always try to identify this person early on – they will help bring you victory in conference bingo.
CONFERENCE BINGO!
‘Sorry if you can’t read this at the back.’
Horrifying gender ratio
Prezi
Lecherous academic
Unnecessary rhetorical flourishes
Overenthusiastic air conditioning
Presenter really proud for having reinvented the wheel
Death by PowerPoint
Skiving a session
Popular academic is scheduled in a tiny room
‘I’ll try to be brief.’
Obtuse handouts
FREE SQUARE
Conference held over major holiday when hotel costs soar
Last minute change of programme
Gratuitous and unnecessary use of French critical theory
‘Thank you, I enjoyed your talk very much.’ Proceeds to utterly destroy talk
Plenary is nth permutation of paper toured over the last two years.
Pie chart
Poster assembled as a collage of A4 printouts
‘Anybody got a DVI to VGA adaptor for my Mac?’
Accessibility issues. Any and all
Extensive use of buzzwords
Clash of the academic alpha males
‘XYZ doesn’t really need an introduction…’ for plenary speaker
Fellow presenter takes drink from your water glass
Unrealistic number of slides
FREE SQUARE
Every bullet. On every slide. Flies in. Separately.
Awkward silence
Presenter doesn’t show up
Chair purposefully mispronounces speaker’s name
Clip art
‘Sorry, I’m a Mac [or PC] person,’ said by the presenter who can’t get the slideshow working
Alcohol reception with insufficient alcohol
Leading academic skives entire day
Question is completely about speaker’s own project
Infomercial masquerading as panel presentation
Conference scheduled for predictably inhospitable climate
Snoozing academic
‘In a longer/earlier/different version of this…’
Weak chairing means that last speaker of four, who has travelled furthest to get there, gets five mins instead of twenty
Conference theme is curiously absent from the programme
Seasoned academic asks junior presenter a mercy question
Food issues. Any and all
Presentation in large lecture theatre attracts <15 attendees
Poorly formatted abstract book
Long winded debate between two people with no room for an
yone else
Someone shows up visibly hungover
Live tweeting
Notes
For the love of trees, I have opted to keep this bibliography (relatively) short. For more details, please go to AcademiaObscura.com/buffalo, where I plan to concoct a multimedia extravaganza containing links, photos, and videos. If I get distracted and don’t get around to doing this (highly likely), I will at the very least provide full references and PDFs (where I can do so legally).
* There isn’t really an international standard for a conference panel. There is, however, a ISO standard for wooden panels used to test paint (ISO/TC 89), which is more or less the same thing, given that most speakers are wooden and the panels are like watching paint dry. ISO 3103 cited above is, in fact, the ISO standard for brewing tea, which won the Ig Nobel for Literature in 1999. While the standard does factor in water hardness and the prohibition on reboiling, it makes no recommendation regarding pre-warming of the teapot. ISO standards are reviewed every five years and I shall be writing to the ISO Technical Committee on Food’s Sub-committee on Tea to correct this oversight just as soon as I have finished writing this book (if I ever finish writing this book).
* Thinking out loud: conference speed dating, papers presented through mime, presentations tweeted using only lolcats …
† The name has been changed a few times. Most recently it was called the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, but presumably changed that when the acronym suddenly became untenable.