Saturday, May 26, 2007

Gauche and Unsophisticated List Part 2

I tend to think that most question and answer sessions at academic conferences or at guest speaker presentations are little more than academic pissing contests. Instead of asking one to two sentence questions, academics and annoyingly pretentious students have to describe their entire dissertation or all the foundations of their beliefs which takes ten minutes, usually to prove that they are smarter and more nuanced than the presenters. So I usually avoid them.

I actually said this out loud in class once. At least my professors laughed instead of rolling their eyes or getting horribly offended and kicking me out of class.

3 comments:

Paul said...

Hi Ginger. trying to leave a comment on this blog instead of your silly, immature myspace account! hopefully it works, I signed up for a blogspot account ages ago and am hoping that it's still active. Anywho, are you on summer vacation or anything of the sort at all now, or do people in your super smart schools have to study year round? I told Mette you were Lawyering but have lost track of exactly what your stress is, and maybe I even got the lawyering thing wrong, so please fill me in so I can know whether your specific expertise may help me if I ever need that type of help. But of course, here's to hoping! Cue

Paul said...

Hi Ginger, Pinecone here. I finally convinced Paul to log on so I could leave you a comments. He insists I get my own blog so I don't have to mooch on his. Anyways. Read your blog, wanted to say hi and back you up on Q and A's usually being extremely annoying. Especially when I studied history people didn't ask questions but basically wanted the lecturer to give them and their theory a stamp of approval. It gets boring FAST!!! But now I don't have lectures anymore and only one semester of classes left. Have a nice summer! P.cone

Paul said...

Hi Ginger. I guess you just don't respond too much to any blog! Although with summer now here you probably have the studying thing going on. I understand, it just sure would be nice to hear from a friend...