miniRant
Ok, I've held off on this until I cooled off enough to not just post a string of profanities...
On Wednesday were the final talks for the REU I was doing this summer. I was one of the first presenters, and the people in the front row essentially pretended I wasn't giving a talk. They were talking amongst themselves, cracking jokes and laughing (albeit quietly) and generally ignoring me. This annoyed me, but I let it go, being as how I had limited time to get through a lot of stuff.
Later, I'm sitting in the back row and reading a book rather than paying attention. So what happens? One of the same people who was laughing and such during MY talk gets up (DURING A TALK) and walks over to me and tells me that people were complaining that I was being rude by reading during the talks. The people in the front row were continuing to just ignore the speaker. My only response was "People were talking during my presentation, so I'm going to read during theirs."
Now...who was wrong here? My understanding is that there's a tradition of bringing something to read during talks that you aren't interested in within academia. However, TALKING in the front row? That seems inexcusable.
Ok, so done with the minirant...perhaps at some point I'll describe this dream I've had parts of for the last couple of nights...it's kind of weird, but then, usually I don't dream. And it does have some sort of twisted internal logic.
On Wednesday were the final talks for the REU I was doing this summer. I was one of the first presenters, and the people in the front row essentially pretended I wasn't giving a talk. They were talking amongst themselves, cracking jokes and laughing (albeit quietly) and generally ignoring me. This annoyed me, but I let it go, being as how I had limited time to get through a lot of stuff.
Later, I'm sitting in the back row and reading a book rather than paying attention. So what happens? One of the same people who was laughing and such during MY talk gets up (DURING A TALK) and walks over to me and tells me that people were complaining that I was being rude by reading during the talks. The people in the front row were continuing to just ignore the speaker. My only response was "People were talking during my presentation, so I'm going to read during theirs."
Now...who was wrong here? My understanding is that there's a tradition of bringing something to read during talks that you aren't interested in within academia. However, TALKING in the front row? That seems inexcusable.
Ok, so done with the minirant...perhaps at some point I'll describe this dream I've had parts of for the last couple of nights...it's kind of weird, but then, usually I don't dream. And it does have some sort of twisted internal logic.