The Guilt Monster

[silburygirl]

Camping put me back on the sleep schedule of a normal human being (i.e. getting up before noon), and I have been clinging desperately to it since. Which is why I am so cranky about having been dragged out last night to watch a friend's boyfriend's band (by 'dragged', I mean by my own guilt at having been bad at hanging out with this particular

Comments

[novin_ha]

Neither me nor GF had our supervisors around for first conferences, nor for first important conferences.

How d'you like Possession? I love parts but on the whole, can't stomach Byatt's infatuation with beauty/disdain for academic feminism/portrayal of lesbianism ;)

[silburygirl]

It's mostly the networking aspect that's making me panic. Like, how do I walk up to someone and say, "Oh, hey, my awesome famous supervisor said to say hi! Please allow me to cunningly network with you now!" without coming across like a complete ass? Much easier if he were there and could do the introductions. (And one of my friends honestly spent part of a conference sleeping in/vomiting in the hotel room that her supervisor and supervisor's husband-who is also a prof in our department-were staying in because she had the flu. Poor girl. Although, to be fair, my supervisor is far too stodgy/middle-aged pseudo-Englishman for me to ever consider crossing that boundary. He might buy me some gravol and sidle away awkwardly.)

I love Possession so far, and totally get a kick out of how it plays with academic stereotypes-I think most people who have spent time around academics will have met at least one of the types. The brand of feminism that she criticises is honestly one that rankles with me a bit (probably because it's very 1980s and I

[novin_ha]

You see, to me it wasn't as much "she criticizes a brand of feminism" as "she portrays feminism as reducible to this" ;) and lesbians in Possession are dead or predatory terribly stereotypical. She has a much better track record with sympathetic gay men, but there's exoticization going on instead, I'd say. What rankles me most, though, is her thin = beautiful tendency. I read another one of her novels two years ago and it struck me how often she would emphasise her heroine's lean body, focusing on 'her ability to wear this type of dress, which would look awful on someone less slim' etc.

As to networking - I don't have a famous and important supervisor, and I certainly don't have any networking of my own, but I guess if I were in your shoes, I'd approach with a terribly clever question about their paper ;D then the hi-saying and networking should come naturally :D

Good luck on your conference. Do you have a paper as well?