Sound and silence at an academic conference

From my room on the 21st floor of a conference hotel in Atlanta, I can hear a distant hum of passing traffic, the occasional whine of a siren, a buzzing light and a rush of air from a vent--but no people. Not a human voice to be heard.

Nothing against people, but I've exceeded my quota for today. I'm with a small team from my campus attending the CIC NetVUE conference, where sessions ask us to listen and think and talk and talk and talk some more, which I have been dutifully doing all day long, both in and out of sessions--talking about the challenges of inculcating in students a sense of vocation, about renewing faculty members' commitment to the mission of the college, about deep listening and close reading and community-engaged learning, but mostly about the traumas small colleges everywhere are enduring.

At many moments throughout the day I've felt the presence of a supportive community. Unlike many academic conferences, this one is characterized not by arrogant posturing but by collaborative exploration of our common struggles and goals. At lunch I sat with faculty members from various disciplines and types of institutions who started spontaneously sharing the most ridiculous comments students have written on course evaluations, and every single one of them felt familiar. 

So many ideas! One session encouraged struggling campuses to develop methods of lamentation--to allow people to grieve the loss of colleagues and majors and programs. Someone told about how in 2020 her campus invited faculty distressed by the demands of pandemic teaching to gather beside a river and release all their fear and anger in a primal scream.

Interesting ideas but by the end of the day all that talk turned into a screaming headache. My colleagues went out to dinner together but I suspect that every restaurant in walking distance is crammed full of conference attendees still talking talking talking, and I've had enough.

So I've retreated to my quiet room. The fan clicks on and I hear a hum; far below on the highway a horn blasts and a siren blares, but here in my room I'm happy to sit still and listen to the silence.