I spent the last few days in Austin, TX, for the annual conference of the Association for Asian American Studies. This was the first conference I attended after being officially PhD-ed and getting a job. This was was also the first conference in which I actually understood what the point of going to academic conferences is. I typically hate going to conferences. I always have a hard time preparing the paper and figuring out how to represent my work within a 20-minute time slot. I'm not all that keen on watching other people give their papers, either. The format, which basically entails people reading off of a page, is excruciatingly boring. And I rarely get anything out of other people's papers that ends up helping my own work. Most of the conferences I went to as a graduate student ended up being expensive CV fillers.
Of course, the main purpose of going to a conference is to network and make connections with important people who work in your field of study. In previous conferences, I knew I was supposed to locate my academic role models and strike up conversation with them, but I was always a bit too intimidated to do so. At the first AAAS conference I went to, I attended a panel in which both Lisa Lowe and Michael Omi gave papers. As a lowly 2nd year graduate student with no reputation or publications to claim, I wasn't going to just butt into their conversation with nothing to say but, "I'm a big fan." So maybe this year's AAAS was a little different for me because I felt more equipped to enter as a colleague rather than an adoring student. I'm still an unknown, given that the publications I've sent through the pipeline have yet to be published. But at least I'm able to assert myself as someone who has made it into the profession.
First I should explain that I got my place in the conference through some networking I had done at the American Literature Association Conference two years ago. At the ALA, there's the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies. I attended their business meeting, which then put me in connection with some folks that I had long admired for their work. It was also from that CAALS meeting that I volunteered to chair a panel for the next ALA conference. It was one of the presenters from my panel who put together the panel proposal for the AAAS conference this year. Long story short: The community of scholars working in Asian American literature is very small. We find each other at the same conferences, read the same journals, and apply for the same jobs.
It is because the Asian Am lit community is so small that we also become heavily invested in each other's careers. So when the chair of my panel announced the fact of my getting a job on this particularly bad year while he was introducing me, the audience gave me a round of applause. The group of folks I had met through CAALS, and who were also presenting at AAAS this year, consists of professors who have either just gotten tenure or are about to. I think they've known each other for a while now, which explains why I never really socialized with them at previous conferences. This time, though, as a new member of the profession, I got invited to go out for lunch and dinner with them. It was from these gatherings that I learned about what their careers have been like. It was also from these gatherings that I may have been able to secure myself another publishing opportunity. That's something that I wish I had figured out earlier: Important developments in your career often happen when you're chitchatting over drinks.
As much as I took delight in being initiated into this "club," I don't like the social hierarchy that it clearly reflects. The social hierarchy of the academia seems to dictate that graduate students and professors reside in different castes, which is something that I never really recognized until my first conference as a soon-t0-be professor. I don't think the division between graduate students and professors is a conscious one. It's not as if these new colleagues of mine declared amongst themselves, "NOW she is worthy of socializing with us." But there is something about the atmosphere of academia that makes you very aware of where you sit on the totem pole. Only the most generous of higher-ups will make a point to lend a hand to lowly graduate students. And only the most aggressive of graduate students will successfully grab the attention of professors.
I think I'm currently in this in-between stage, where I still identify myself as a graduate student, and where most of my friends are still graduate students, but where I've also become aware of the additional capital and access I've recently attained. This became very obvious to me during the nights while I was in Austin-- After the conference events were over, a lot of the graduate students went out to 6th Street and partied it up. On a couple of the nights, I joined in on the drinking, dancing and flirting. I had a lot of fun, and made some new friends. But a part of me also felt that I didn't belong there, much in the way that I got over fraternity parties after my first year of college.
Not to say that professors don't get drunk and stupid sometimes. Maybe they just do it in separate circles. I guess I'll find out at next year's AAAS conference, which will take place in New Orleans!
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