More about my trip

It's been a hectic week, so I've not been as verbose as normal. (Summer semester winding down and all that.)

My trip was pretty good. The presentation went reasonably well - I didn't have any hecklers or "pointed" questions (a "pointed" question is someone asking a question they know the answer to already, either because they want to look intelligent when they ask it, or because they want to trip you up, or, in some rare cases, just because they're an a-hole.). I didn't really get a discussion going but that's okay I guess.

It isn't like I was applying for a new job or anything - this is just one of those things profs are sort of expected to do, to keep feeding the C.V. beast, and so now I've done my bit for the year.

I will say a couple of things - I saw some folks I'd gone to grad school with and spent some time talking with them. One of them was as smarmy as I remembered him - always dropping names and talking about the type of car he drove, crap like that. But I also got the sense he was basically insecure and dissatisfied with his work, so the smarminess somehow didn't bother me as much as it did when we were in offices down the hall from each other.

A couple other people, after talking with them, made me realize a couple of things:

a. I'm pretty lucky where I am. I have a few problem students but apparently everyone has them, and it seems that cheating and dishonesty aren't so rampant (or at least, aren't practiced with the same cavalier disregard for any kind of ethical/moral standard) at the school where I teach. And whatever pressure there is to publish is a lot less than most places. And I'm doing pretty well, in most of the generally-accepted measures of "success."

b. I am good enough. That's a big thing I wrestle with - I beat myself up for not doing more research, or being a more dynamic teacher, or things like that. But from talking to my former colleagues - both in hearing what they said to me, about me, and in hearing their attitudes towards their own work, I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm far more self-critical than I need to be. (The challenge will be to figure out how to throttle back on the intense self-criticism).

People tend to seem to think more highly of me than I think of myself. I don't know if that's because I have such a highly-tuned inner critic that I can usually see all the stuff I've done that's less than perfect, or if EVERYONE walks around thinking that ~80% of the stuff they do is crap (when everyone else thinks it's just fine, or even better than fine) because they're so close to it, where they see all the false starts and screw-ups and all the stuff you DON'T usually mention in a research presentation or article.

As I said before, I'm glad I don't live in or work in a big city. Too many people. I can't remember if it was here I wrote about my "5% hypothesis" (that 5% of the human populace is just not fit to be out in public and will be a major nuisance to everyone else - so if you're somewhere where there are 20 other people, only one will be, on average, a major nuisance, but if you cram 1000 people into an area, then you begin to have problems because you have 50 nuisances). Big cities are also expensive.

And you know? I think the South is - despite what a lot of people say - just more tolerant of the whole range of human eccentricity. It's like...in the big Northern cities at least (I don't have a lot of experience with big Southern cities), there's a lot more emphasis on APPEARANCE and it doesn't matter so much what's really inside you. Whereas where I live - you can be missing teeth, or have bad hair, or be kind of fat - but if you're a decent person who is kind to others, you're accepted, you're a part of the community. My experience in some of the cities I've lived in is that, at least in some sections of the city, it's like there's an invisible version of one of those amusement-park height markers, except in the city, it says, "You must be prettier than this to walk down this street." Or "better dressed than this." Or whatever.

(I am making a distinction between "eccentric" - which I define as "weird but potentially interesting" and "not fit to be out in public" - which I generally define as people who are so rude, obnoxious and demanding that St. Francis himself would be hard-pressed not to be tempted to sock them in the nose. Yeah, maybe I'm not entirely consistent - in that I like one group of deviation-from-the-norm and can't stand another, but whatever.)

I don't know. I'll take the people with dental, skin, or hair challenges but a heart of gold over some botoxed wench with a soul like a Frigidare any day. I'm not saying there aren't good people in the cities - absolutely not. It's just, some of the most challenging interpersonal interactions I've had in my life - the ones where I came out of it feeling lessened, like I wasn't pretty enough or thin enough or wealthy enough or that there was something wrong with me because I had "failed" to marry, came from experiences I had living in the city.

I did spend a little time roaming around and doing a little shopping. I was somewhat frustrated that the really fun, really cool shopping district was just a couple more miles north of where I was - I suppose I could have kept walking but it was kind of hot, and I figured they'd not let me into the fancy department stores anyway seeing as by that point I was all sweaty and my hair had kind of turned into a dandelion pouf from the humidity. I suppose I could have taken a taxi but I was afraid of giving the wrong address to the driver, or having him misunderstand me, and winding up somewhere where I didn't intend to be and didn't know how to get back to where I belonged. Especially because it seemed that the cabbies (at least the ones I had experience with) in that city didn't have the greatest command of English.

Oh, yeah, I'm probably going to some political-correctness hell for that - for admitting I prefer cabbies who speak decent English. But whatever.

On the other hand...the (v. expensive) restaurant I ate in for two evenings (it was convenient to where I was staying) had foreign waiters and they worked out well. The waiter I had (both nights) was a West Indian chap, and he was a good waiter - attentive without being fawning, quick to notice when I needed something, made helpful suggestions. (I tipped him well. The high prices and no-substitutions policy weren't HIS fault).

One thing I noticed about traveling - and I have to say here that I am most definitely not a "go out at night" girl - I'm not a pub-crawler (I've discovered that even small quantities of alcohol give me migraines, and most bars don't like to see that person come in who orders a seven-up or an orange juice when they could be selling Appletinis or something like that. And also - going pub-crawling alone sucks [and it's not safe - even if you're not consuming booze - bad stuff can still happen], and no one I knew invited me; most of my old buds were people who lived right in around that area and they were going back to spouses and kids at the end of the day). I'm not a concert-goer - most music venues are too loud for me. So after dinner, I go back to my hotel room.

And there's a sort of tipping point - I think it's about 8 pm for me - where the hotel room sort of ceases being a place you're trapped and bored with nothing to do, and where it becomes sort of a haven - you don't have to be out, you can put your pajamas on and scroll around the unfamiliar television lineup to see if there's either a program you like, or a channel you don't get, on. Or you can pull out your book and read. And you know? I kind of notice that at home, too - there's a point at which you kind of give up on the day a little, and you welcome whatever distraction you can find - you put down whatever work you brought home, or don't try to do "improving" things any more.

For me, it usually means finding either an episode of "Mythbusters" or something on the Food Network on the telly, or pulling out a book. Or even just going to bed early.

It's funny how travel makes you notice mundane things about yourself.

Yes, I am very much a stay-at-home, old-maidish, Miss-Marple sort of type of person. I'm coming to the point where I'm no longer bugged by people thinking that's either odd or boring - How a person chooses to spend their time, whether it's dancing at a bar or reading a novel - should really be something that's their own personal choice, without someone else's eye-rolling or implication that the person is somehow less because they're not very "social."

Because - and this was particularly true on my last trip - I get enough of people during the day. I don't need to be with them late into the night.