The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece by "Conference Man," who made a follow-up visit to MLA this year, the annual conference of the Modern Language Association, which hosts the largest conference for academics in English Studies as well as the shark pool of annual job interviews for people in that field. He captures the extreme creepiness of the event. [Note: The Chronicle only makes the article freely available for a short time, four or five days, so read it quick if you are interested.]
For some reason, every year I visit the "Scary Place," where hundreds of candidates are interviewing for a dwindling number of positions. "The Pit" reminds me of how very fortunate I am to have a tenure-track job and that only a little luck separates me from "Chris."
I didn't see anyone in the Pit that I knew this year, and, after a few minutes, I went to the men's room to collect myself and decide where to go next. As I washed my hands, I overheard someone vomiting in one of the stalls behind me. Conference Man saw his own younger face in the mirror. He wished he could say something reassuring the man in the stall. But his words would probably be misinterpreted.
At my first and only MLA conference, after a day of interviewing for jobs I wouldn't get, I boarded an elevator heading down from the tenth floor where my last interview was held. A woman standing next to me smirked and said, "You realize your name tag is upside down, right?"
Posted by johndan at February 4, 2005 10:52 AM | TrackBack