Note: I wrote this in December of 2012, when I was a 2nd year graduate student — I haven’t changed anything about it, but as I look back at it now, I see the incredible privilege that I had to have funding available to attend the APA (now the SCS). I also have somewhat different opinions about the SCS than I did then, for a variety of reasons. But I do stand by my impressions that it is exciting to get together with classicists from across the country!
I love what I study. I really, truly do. And I also love teaching. But there does come a point in the semester when I’m really tired. It’s around the point where papers are ominously looming in the future and sleep is an increasingly rare commodity. This usually happens to coincide with the times when my students need the most pre-finals help, but my own classes and research also needs the most help. And because this is toward the end of the semester, my brain decides to team up with all of these other distractions and I start thinking about how much fun it will be to go home and see my friends and family over the break. I’m sure everyone is familiar with this pre-finals, end-of-semester convergence of stressful, exhausting factors, but that’s not really what I want to write about here. There’s really no reason to think about that again for several more months anyway!
What I do want to talk about is something that has become enshrined in my Winter Break routine—the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association. This is the biggest annual meeting in the US for the Classics field and I assume it’s a lot like the annual meetings most other disciplines hold (the MLA, etc), except with way way more Greek and Latin. Every year, I have to weigh my love of attending the conference against my love of having extra money in my pocket for the upcoming semester. Still, for the past 3 years, the conference has won out over money in a shocking upset!
There are a couple reasons for this. One is that it’s really fantastic to be surrounded by people who have the same (or at least similar) niche interests. And new people. See, grad school is a weird environment because you spend the overwhelming majority of your time with people in your program. It almost starts to seem like everyone spends all their time doing the same things you do, because everyone you normally come into any contact with really does. At the same time, in any non-departmental situation,it immediately becomes apparent that not everyone does what you do. As a classicist, I can’t tell you how many times I get in a conversation that runs about like this:
Me (in response to me explaining that the reason I’m whining about the cold so much is that I’m from California and I have an excuse, in response to which people inevitably ask why I would move from California to freezing Michigan): I’m a graduate student at U of M. I study Classics.
Stranger: Classics?
Me: You know, like Greek and Roman history and literature.
Stranger: (silence)
Me: It’s like that movie Troy, with Brad Pitt. And sort of like Gladiator, with Russell Crowe. Except I read the stuff, and it’s in Greek or Latin.
[end scene]
So, a conference filled with people who love what you love but also aren’t the same people that you see every day and in every class is a wonderful thing. My colleagues are the greatest, but I’ve heard about what they work on already. New people with new ideas about a shared passion is really really exciting.
Along the same lines, it’s also a great chance to see everyone. Academic circles are unfortunately transitory. Surviving grad courses together or going on a dig with someone is a real bonding experience. But then the dig is over, or someone finishes their dissertation, or gets a more promising job at another institution, and they’re suddenly on the other side of the country (or even on the other side of the Atlantic!). We have a lot of brief-yet-meaningful interactions with other people in our field and it’s really wonderful to have a ready-made reunion opportunity every year. And as an added perk, it’s a reunion in a new place each year! It’s pretty hard to go wrong with Seattle (home of a great zoo, great coffee, and a fantastic number of people who can throw fish through the air!).
And on a more academic note, going to panels is kind of exciting because I get to go hear about whatever I want. There’s no expectation that I be there or do anything in particular with the information. I am literally just there to hear about things that are interesting to me. It’s almost like reading just for fun (man, I miss those days!). No pressure, no deadlines, nothing but what I want to listen to!
In the end though, it’s not any one of these things that makes it worth the time and the money to go to the APA every year. It’s the fact that all of these things combine to make me really excited about my field. By the end of the fall semester, everyone is exhausted. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that I have a pretty sweet (albeit not the most lucrative)situation as a grad student. I get paid to study and teach subjects that I love. A lot of people don’t have that. In the mad dash to finish everything by the end-of-semester deadlines, it’s far easier to focus on the negatives—I haven’t been properly rested since sometime in November, I have a 15-page paper to write in a week and no ideas for a topic, flights home will be expensive,writing and grading final exams is a chaotic mess, and it’s too damn cold in Michigan! Going to the APA reminds me why I love what I do and why I really am excited about the next semester. I get to meet people and learn things that make me look forward to diving back into school.
There will come a time in the terrifyingly near future when I’ll have to go to this conference for professional reasons, and I’m sure that my whole experience will change a bit once I’m no longer a recreational conference-goer. But for the time being, I’ll continue to embrace this as a chance to recharge my Classics batteries and remember that my field is pretty seriously awesome. My fellow grad students will appreciate how hard this is to say, at a time of the year when our stipends are stretched especially thin, but it’s really worth it to me. In the dreary depths of winter, I need a forcible injection of academic enthusiasm and passion, and there’s really nothing better than going from academic panels to karaoke with your colleagues from all over the country to remind you that you love what you do!