Prepare for Surprises

Way last fall, I was deeply involved in writing a paper for a philosophy conference. Just so you know, here's what I learned from the experience:

Some graduate students and professors, while delighted to be invited, and excited to include their academic papers in their CVs, don't actually prepare for these events at all.

In a word, my colleagues from SMU and I were the oddballs at the conference. We wore business attire, we had PowerPoint displays, we had rehearsed, we had edited our papers and prepared thumb drive copies for anyone who wanted to read the final drafts , we were on time, we checked the equipment before we started, we hadn't slept the night before . . . We were total philosophy nerds with a side order of Microsofty.

Our peers stood at the podiums and shuffled through preliminary drafts of their papers, reading occasional paragraphs, sifted through a few more pages, read something else that sounded a little random, and said things like, "Oh, I forgot to read you this part back here."

Academic conferences may differ by discipline. English conferences, say those sponsored by the Modern Language Association, may be a lot different, and I'm certain engineering conferences are so buttoned down that they squeak, organizationally speaking. There is a middle path, though, and the next time I do another academic conference, I will do a lot of the same preparation that I did for this one. However, I'll also do some things I didn't do before this one:

• Check out the sponsoring organization's culture by looking at photos of previous conferences. If I'd known that professors were presenting in Pendleton shirts, I might have left the suit and heels at home.


• Be fully prepared with all the electronic presentation tools, but be ready to work without them. Not every academic conference is the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and not every presentation is in a big auditorium, so you need to be ready to scale it back for more intimate settings.


• Carry a business card with your email address on it, and maybe the URL for your blog. Yes, there's an app for that, but not everyone carries that kind of phone.


• Check out local restaurants in advance online: Indian, Chinese, and Thai food trump the usual college cafeteria or banquet fare most of the time, and you can have better conversations in small groups than you can at a huge table if you meet any interesting conferees.

So, if you go back to school and you get invited to present at a conference, square your shoulders and your paper, and keep your eyes open -- it's another learning opportunity.

The Absent Minded Processor

When I first started working as a monastic assistant at St. Martin's, I thought I might have finally found something that I physically could not do because of my aging body. The preparation of each meal wasn't a problem: cleanup, however, with the toting back and forth of dishes, ice and a zillion other things needed for a decent meal, was a physical challenge. It turned out that I just was out of condition, so I was planning to keep the job.

As I continued the student side of my life, though, the mental part of my life was losing its capacity to absorb information. I could understand the plays, like Antigone, Dr. Faustus, and St. Joan. I could write the summaries and understand the intricacies of the proprietary Web sites used by the professors to assign and submit ENG 102 homework. I could even keep up with the MATH 110 homework, although the break point in algebra frequently doesn't show up until about the fifth week of classes, judging from my previous experience. However, comprehending anything said by Alasdair MacIntyre in "After Virtue: A Study of Moral Theory" was totally beyond me.

I know that some professors have low opinions of the intellectual capacity of some of their students, so I buckled down and spent every spare moment reading the assigned materials for PHIL 301. I thought about ethics on my commute. I looked up vocabulary words in the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy and tried to think up sentences in which I could use "interminability of moral discourse" and "elenchus." I even called a friend who has a degree in philosophy, who found my struggles amusing.

It took another friend, as well as a counselor in the SMU Learning Center, to point out that I'm trying to learn another language. Philosophy uses a lot more Greek than medical research, hospital marketing or local and international news, the areas that I've been writing about most of my life. Philosophers also use some English constructions that can cause migraines in unsuspecting passersby. The counselor nailed the actual cause of my difficulties: despite my best efforts at exercise, nutrition and all the rest, my brain, and thus my learning style are aging. It is just going to take more time for me to learn this stuff. Plus a tutor who has already taken the class and, I pray, passed.

So, we added up my class hours, added twice that number to account for the homework I should be doing for each class, and then doubled the homework hours that should be devoted to ethics. Once we added on the hours I was working in food service, I was running out of time to actually drive to school.

So, I'm not quitting the job feeding the monks because of the physical challenge, but because my brain needs more time to spend with Plato, MacIntyre and the other guys. They're not as much fun as the monks, at least at this stage, but there's hope that someday they might be. After all, my friend the philosopher seems to find introductory ethics hilarious.

I can't believe I'm finally here

It finally happened last night, as I was driving home from another food service shift. It was that moment of bliss, when I realized that after all the planning, the relocating from my hometown, the uprooting of relationships, the expense, the homework, the tuition, the endless second-guessing of my means and motives, here I was:

• I was driving home to a lovely, quiet place almost built for an older scholar. Well, someone who wants to be a scholar.
• I had just spent 12 hours on the campus where I had wanted to be for about three years, attending classes, studying and learning.
• I had just punched out of a job that, while I still wonder if I can handle the physical challenges, makes me happy on the level of providing service to others.
• Despite the complete and total loss of my social life, for the most part I'm living the way I want to live.

What made this come to mind was the encounter I had yesterday with the very first person I've met on the SMU campus who obviously didn't want to be there. Sparing the details and identifying information, it was pretty obvious to me and the others around him that he'd rather be somewhere else doing something more important. He is morose, mopy and uninterested, a depressed and depressing contrast to everyone else I've met on campus. Commuter students come in from an hour or more away each day, and campus residents seem to be pretty happy to be around for the most part. The school must be doing something for them that doesn't reach this guy.

That last paragraph sounds remarkably chirpy, but SMU is different from the places I've worked in the real world. From CBS to Seattle-radio-stations-otherwise-unnamed, and from the UW to private non-profits, the norm has been that every organization has a good percentage of employees or beneficiaries who are looking for a better job, higher status or more money elsewhere. At least twice I've been among the group looking at the want ads on a daily basis as I worked as hard as I could during the day. That's why the atmosphere at SMU amazes me -- and why this sad little kid has me concerned for him.

As far as classes are concerned, I've noticed that every time I think I'm caught up, more reading needs to be done immediately. Of course, math and accounting majors keep finding more problems and philosophy majors find more syllogisms, so I hope I can get used to the workload by the end of the semester.

Meanwhile, this morning the sun is coming up and the crows are calling me out to see what's happening on the water. May you find your bliss moment today and tomorrow and ever after.