Conference flotsam

Leftover flotsam from the weekend conference:

At several conference sessions I was the oldest person in the room by at least a decade. When did they start granting PhDs to 12-year-olds?

I am no longer interested in hearing conference papers in which the thesis statement is something like "I am interested in [obscure topic]." Trust me: I already know you're interested--that's why you're giving the paper! The trick is to make me interested, and telling me that you're interested is not the way to do it. This is simply the grad-school equivalent of everyone's least favorite freshman thesis statement: "I can really relate to this topic because it's really important to me and has a really big impact on me in my life and how I feel about my future and my career." Please, people: if [obscure topic] is important, show me why I should care! 

And while you're at it, how about demonstrating a little awareness of context? I heard way too many papers that focused narrowly on extremely special topics that seemed to exist entirely in isolation from, well, everything else in the whole entire history of the world. 

I'm still dumbfounded by the professor who told me she can't assign novels in literature classes because students don't have time to read them. They're just awfully busy and they won't read anyway, so why try? But I'll bet she's still dumbfounded by the fact that I assign seven novels in my Later American Novel course--and my students read them. "They're English majors," I told her, and she said, "But where do they find the time?"

Milwaukee's airport offers a last-minute opportunity to purchase cheese curds at overinflated airport prices, but it also offers a used bookstore right in the airport. That's not something you see every day. Periodically that generic airport voice announced over the PA system that wireless internet was available throughout the airport, but that voice neglected to mention the cost ($4.95 for one hour). Tiny little Yeager airport in Charleston, West Virginia provides free wireless access all over the terminal, but Milwaukee has to lure travelers in with vague promises and then charge outrageous fees. I reject your $4.95 internet access, Milwaukee! (Which is why there was no blog post yesterday.)

When the pilot's voice comes on to explain that there will be a slight delay to allow the maintenance people to determine whether that little bump we felt did any damage to the plane--"It's probably nothing, but we'd like to get it checked out to make sure the landing gear will deploy when we need it"--there's nothing to do but sit there and wait and hope that the flight gets to Chicago in time, and then when the delay in Milwaukee eliminates any hope for lunch in Chicago and you end up close to sundown in Charleston without having had anything to eat since breakfast in Milwaukee and then there's some kind of mechanical failure in the gates at the exit from the parking garage so that you sit there in your car surrounded by other cars while maintenance people run around trying to get the thing working again without giving you any way out or any indication of how long you might be sitting there and whether you have time to get pizza delivered to the line of cars waiting to exit the parking garage and then when the gates finally open after 40 minutes you actually have to PAY for the time you've spent sitting there involuntarily with no way out--well, it makes for a very long day. 

So I'm glad to be home. I have a whole different set of annoyances to deal with on campus this week, but at least I won't have to worry about whether the landing gear will deploy correctly.