PTSD

BNC and its aftermath

I promise that this post will contain no lists. I do not promise that it will be coherent, funny, informative, or even mildly entertaining. I never do. Today, I can't even promise proper grammar and spelling.

We almost went to Las Vegas for the day when our flight was overbooked, but it didn't turn out that way. Instead, we flew back to Dulles and waited an hour for our luggage and a half hour for the bus. I broke two pieces of luggage, but S says this doesn't mean I get to go shopping. This was before we spent $150 at Target and bought nothing on our shopping list. Not even catfood.

I'm guessing the "no shopping, because you already own 17 bags and three suitcases" thing still applies, even if I manage to return the two bags that self-destructed.

Vegas would have been more fun than a bus to Rosslyn. And warmer.

Once we finally got home I opened iphoto and started looking for pictures to share with you, our Loyal Reader, that would somehow capture the atmosphere that is the BNC. And I found out that I took over five hundred photos during the trip. Two of them were conference related.

Both were photos of people who have been mentioned on this blog, and are therefore not eligible for posting.

I have no images of the conference hotel, the hotel we stayed in, panels or events related to the conference, the places we ate on the days I attended conference sessions, famous scholars in our field, or even the road between the conference hotel and our hotel. None at all.

I do, however, have many examples of the touristy stuff we did on Tuesday and Thursday. So I'm going to post a few of those over on my flickr account. As my boss called on Friday to let me know that he's been busy while I was gone, and could I come in on Monday morning, and the evil PT had six days to come up with new ways to make my life miserable, it's safe to say this might take a few days.

You can get to the photos by way of the following image:



This is the restaurant S, Serena, Cris, and I ate at on Thursday. Many of the characters you know and love (including Priya, who told me about it the next day) were drinking beer down the street, but none of them called to invite us. And yet people wonder why I seem so anti-social. It's because I can't be relied upon to invite myself to things, even when I do manage to remember the phone numbers of people I should call.

In non-alcoholic conference news, I saw six panels. I was part of (not as presenter, unfortunately) two panels. Five of the six panels I attended were awful, and all four of the papers I was interested in (the ones that led me to attend most of the aforementioned panels) were not presented.

When I say awful, I mean it in the "brain trying to crawl out my ear and escape to the beach" kind of way.

I did get to see the qual/quant debate rehashed in a discussion of case methodology and violent conflict.

Conclusions? There must be some key terms that that mean "systems theory spoken here, rather than rat choice and econometrics." Those terms are not systems, modeling, complexity, dynamics, cybernetics, or feedback. Or any combination thereof.

I think I need to figure out how to put a systems panel together for next year's BNC. That way, I know there will be at least a few other people there who don't raise a confused eyebrow at the names Forrester or Meadows.

To add to my general discomfort, I also had a long conversation with someone about the comps from hell. S/he was, as promised by a CM in a conversation on the same subject, understanding and helpful. I again got the response of "I thought you knew that, and just didn't want to talk about it."

I'm growing very tired of that reaction. I'm wondering why no one saw fit to share this belief with me. Say, three years ago? But that's a different post.

The generally positive result does not mean that the conversation was not awkward and exhausting. It also does not mean that I no longer need to deal with the comps from hell. Like taxes and death, those comps.

The presenters on one panel I chaired were great, even though I had little prior interest in either the topic or the methodology employed.

Through the constant shifting of panel membership, I also ended up on a panel with a scholar whose work I admire and to whom I should have introduced myself a long time ago. This was good, as he does work in two of the areas I am interested in.

The very last panel on the last day I was there made up for a great deal of annoyance with both people and the conference format as a whole. I thought I was at a panel on teaching, but it turned out to be mostly about complexity theory and its role in political science and IR theory. Two scholars whose work I've read and admired presented, I got to ask that question that gets noticed (by the presenters and the discussant, actually, which was pretty cool) and another professor in the audience wants to see the syllabus I've started putting together and suggestions of readings for a class he's teaching.

I even got to put in a plug for the importance of grad students in expanding the concerns of IR to include things like complexity, systems, network theory, and technology. Hubris, maybe, but it did seem like a good thing to mention that, as we're generally computer literate and comfortable with things like non-linear causality, as well as actively searching for new ideas, anyone who wanted to push those things might want to ask their friendly neighborhood grad student for help.


Also, I'm at a school with faculty who encourage the work I want to do, and I still spend a lot of time trying to teach myself the theory behind it. I'm all for establishing networks in IR for sharing resources, ideas, and panel abstracts with people who aren't so lucky. The number of IR people who are interested in complex systems isn't large enough for people to work in isolation.

Have no fear that my comment was of the "annoying and the source of a bad reputation that will bite you in the ass later" type. I was amazingly deferential (and not only with deference as measured against my usual standards) and the reaction was one of interest and business-card-exchange. Those are good things, right?

The third presenter is putting together a textbook for IR theory that sounds like it will be exciting and useful. If nothing else, his decision to categorize constructivism as "realist-constructivism," "liberal-constructivism," and other hyphenated categories was comforting and familiar. And he invoked Quantum Guy, a much beloved subject here at PTSD.*

So a good time all around, even if I did see GS right afterwards and fail to rescue her from a conversation because I was talking to complexity theory guy #3. That's three people who are potential members of my academic peeps.**

Another was at the TUWSNBN reception that night, but despite the signalling of another systems-loving grad student I was far too busy scaring someone to join the conversation. Probably for the best, as I'm never at my most sparkling when surrounded by too much noise and too many people.

In other news, I finally snapped over the age-old "why are you doing IR instead of ..." question. The one that always means "You don't belong here" even when it sounds perfectly polite.

In fact, those are the worse times, because the person asking generally thinks that they're doing a favor, by pointing out things like your bad fit with a department or your limited career prospects, as if those weren't things that have already been considered in the decision. Or as if they had a better idea of the answer than you. Or as if, and this one is the most irritating, they have a lock on what counts as real IR and what you do isn't included.

I'm not claiming that this was the case in this particular situation. Just that this was the very last occurance in a very long line of my responses that never quite convey the "screw you, in a polite and non-threatening way" attitude that I aim to project.

Unfortunately, this wasn't any of the times that the question was aimed at me. Instead, it was asked of someone else, immediately after the subject had explained why the work s/he wanted to do was a good fit within IR, rather than the ... discipline. And it pissed me off, and rather than walking away (as I try very hard to do) I said what I thought of the question. And then I apologized, even though I'm still a little ticked about it.

Because that is what people who do not say things without thinking and then forget why they shouldn't have said them do. And I am trying very hard to act like one of those people, especially in things like receptions and panels at the BNC.

And when I can't, because I'm tired or nervous or both, I stick to conversations with people who already know me and continue to talk to me anyway.

Can't be any more specific than that, because I also (perhaps foolishly, but I don't think so) gave the blog address to someone who requested it. And while I have no problem sounding like an idiot online, I'm guessing no one else in our pantheon of characters wants that privilege.

Final thought? I'm trying not to think too hard about the average cost-per-business card of the BNC. It's a very high number. Let's leave it at that.

* Did you know that Quantum Guy is one of the most cited scholars currently breathing and publishing in our field?*** See, there's some useful info for you.

** This would be the group of scholars with whom I need to acquaint myself and vice versa.**** It was not made clear to us at the advising sessions whether this was a good thing for our careers in general, or just a chance to add some new people with whom to drink beer when the panels are over. I'm guessing it's both.

*** Should that be "publishing and breathing"? I'm not sure.

**** Why are none of these scholars female? Are they all hiding? Are we too afraid to be both outside the mainstream and women to introduce ourselves?

posted by Elizabeth @ 10:55 PM