AARgh
I'm back from the annual meeting of religionistas. It was in DC this year, a city I recall (barely) from my college days, back when I had an asymmetrical haircut, the drinking age was 18 and Sugar Walls was the song of the moment. I wore leggings and booties (and I'm never doing that again, trends notwithstanding) and bought my cool accessories at Commander Salamander. Bruce Willis was doing wine cooler commercials, and nobody had a computer, let alone an ipod.This visit, I had a symmetrical haircut, wore a suit, listened to Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane on my mp3 player, bought gallons of coffee at the various Starbucks and was never asked for id.
I tried to get to the Brickskeller, one of my favorite pubs in Dupont Circle, but was caught in the conference vortex that made people eat and drink only within walking distance of the convention center. This was fine, but one of the highlights of the trip was getting to leave the area and have dinner at a really nice place called the Tabard Inn.
This was a highlight because I got to see Stephanie and George! Who are they, you might ask. Well, Stephanie and I lived together in the IHOG (or international house of girls) senior year, with Sarah, Jeanne (of Jeanne and Steve), Kris and Ann. Stephanie went out dancing all the time, bleached her hair and listened to great music. I am a Sinead O'Connor fan (Lion and the Cobra, baby!) because of her. We lived together the year after senior year, when I finished the extended dance version of college and she worked. I got to help her make gnocchi from scratch, which was sticky as hell. She and George started dating around senior year, and he's a great guy -- he is amazingly smart (evidenced by his appreciation of Stephanie) and sweet and funny. He actually lived for a while in NY up the street from my mom's house (and upstairs from the drummer for Damn Yankees!).
Anyway, we had a lovely dinner and caught up and I wished very much afterwards that the dinner had been a lot longer.
Dinner with non-religionistas was also a nice break from the stress of interviewing. I had eight interviews in three days. I'm profoundly grateful that I had that many; last year I had four, one campus visit interview and no job offers, so I'm hoping things work out better this year. Still, I had to spend a lot of time in the candidate's pit, er, lounge. Interviewees wait in a big room for members of the search committee to come get them. Grad students, postdocs, the non-tenured, the tenured, all in their interview clothes. Everyone's reviewing his or her notes, sweating, tapping pencils, looking around to see who else is there. There are no windows. You can cut the anxiety with a knife. I was lucky to spend a lot of my waiting time with people I knew, so I didn't have time to brood and sweat and tap. Ed and Anya, from RIJS, and Andrea from Columbia were all there with me.
The interviewers are much more casually dressed. Amazingly, this year everyone I met was nice and asked straightforward questions. Also, the people doing the interviewing seemed, across the board, to get along with each other. At one place, they even made jokes together (and laughed at my jokes, which instantly endeared them to me).
I'm tense and scared and hopeful and pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. I'm trying to live with all of this as indeterminate and not put my life on hold until I find out what I'm doing next year.
The non-interview portions of the conference were good too. I saw tons of people I know and like and had two other dinners, with AAR people, that were a lot of fun. Heather and I were in the same hotel and had a drink together in the hotel bar -- so grown up! Her husband Craig has made a really funny site portraying George Bush as a drag queen.
More on the panel later.
p.s. my toe is much better. Still swollen, but not broken.
posted by Gina @ 9:52 PM
0 comments
