All Work and All Play: Reflections on Conference Going Part One

Every time I bring class work to a conference I find myself working on class work and research simultaneously, which leads to a strange, almost surreal swirl of worlds. Obviously, my research and teaching are connected, but they seem more separate to me the rest of the year. I teach, I go back to my office and, if I'm lucky or disciplined enough to make to the time, I write or research or both.

Then I go to class. Then I grade, write rubrics, assignment sheets, study guides, etc. Sounds glamorous, I know. But my compartmentalizing fails me when sitting in a hotel room, lounge, or bar, trying to do both. I've divided my scholarly world here and my classroom world so distinctly and, I think, erroneously and unnecessarily that the mix of the two never fails to jar me a little.

So, I'm sitting here prepping for a presentation, breaking some of the rules I teach in my undergrad communication classes, reading what I've written about grieving my brother's death 10 or so years ago (see my blog Long Canyon Lost for more on this), and I come across a passage in which I describe going to an academic conference right after he died. It's like standing in front of a mirror with a mirror behind me, watching my copied image get smaller and smaller until I can't make it out. I wonder: am I teaching what I write and research, truly? If so, how? Because I can't quite make it out from here.

I guess I'll pack up and go to the presentation, deciding to keep things separate a little while longer until I can make more sense of the relationship. It's an ongoing and invigorating journey, though, so I don't expect it to conclude just yet. Maybe I should write about it, or write about writing about it. That makes sense, right?

Epilogue
Presentation went well, inspiring and educational. Back in the room, grading papers. Transition wasn't as abrupt, probably because of invigorating communication with colleagues at lunch. Amazing how the social support networks can ease the transition from one sphere to the next.

Flashback to a simpler time...my old website!

Just had a strange experience. I went searching for an old hypertext performance I had put together for a graduate class at Arizona State University. It's a personal narrative that plays with voice and the temporal nature of storytelling by using hypertext to lead the reader to (seemingly) unrelated websites that may (or may not) contribute to the story being told. Most of the pages linked from my original page cannot be found, and I didn't bother to update them, but you can experience it here.

The strange part, besides reading what I wrote years ago (which has since been published in a different version), was that this narrative was linked to an old website I created as a Ph.D. student. It listed similar (but ultimately different) research interests and foci for teaching. The descriptions were more complicated yet stunningly simple in their assertions. I've changed them to link to my current page, but before I did I marveled not only at my own assessments of my research and teaching but the fact that I had this other, outdated, piece of me floating in cyberspace. I had literally lost track of myself!