Comments on: so you’re going to asa for the first time?

By: newsocprof

newsocprof — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:13:18 +0000

i’ve always found ASA to be pretty buttoned-up (after attending for about 8 years) and have heard the same about PAA. perhaps there is a section effect? maybe my perception is skewed also because i compare it to the boozefest that is ASC (crim meetings) — must be the higher proportion of ex-felons walking around (we all lack self-control after all).

fwiw, smalinky, i did the employment service because i had some spousal considerations that made my search a little weird. i also think its usefulness depends on area and how high you are shooting — the most highly ranked soc programs tend not to do it, but since my area (crim) has a goofy relationship with sociology rankings, there were very good crim programs that participated in the employment service.

i thought it was helpful — it helped me figure out what questions to ask when i interviewed, what was really important to me, and changed my mind about applying to two places because the interactions were horrendous/strange/disappointing/etc.

By: smalinky

smalinky — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:06 +0000

Now I’m embarrassed I called it a misspelling! We are so the studs of the nets.

By: belle lettre

belle lettre — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:34:36 +0000

I didn’t read it as a misspelling. I thought that you were asserting, quite rightly, that grads are the studs of the nets.

By: smalinky

smalinky — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:31:45 +0000

I’m so embarrassed about spelling “students” wrong.

By: smalinky

smalinky — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:31:01 +0000

Anyone have thoughts on the Employment Service for grad studnets going on the market? A good use of time, or just a way to run around and exhaust yourself?

By: junoksun

junoksun — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:31:16 +0000

@anomie: HA! thanks for the clarification! Godde knows we ventured into risque places for the love of research ;-)

By: belle lettre

belle lettre — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:22:33 +0000

OMG. This is crazy. Maybe it’s just because I go to small special topic conferences so far (in employment law and constitutional theory), and I’m younger than everyone by at least 7-8 years and everyone else is always married, and I never go to the bars and drink afterwards, but I gotta say: I’M GOING TO THE WRONG CONFERENCES.

Although you do hear about the few single law profs getting together at their institutions or meeting other law profs at the big conferences (AALS, Law and Society), so I imagine romance must bloom somehow, and perhaps it’s not by exchanging merely business cards. But y’all make this sound like an episode of one of those teenage shows. The Hills or something. I dunno.

By: Kieran

Kieran — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:56:18 +0000

As soon as I corrected her misperceptions, she walked away

You should have said, “No, my name is Pitrim Sorokin.”

a lot of casual sex

I know someone who used not to bother to book a hotel room, on the — empirically well-supported — grounds that he would be hooking up with someone anyway. so why waste the money?

By: olderwoman

olderwoman — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:25:00 +0000

I’ve always been boringly monogamous, but I’ll say that apart from the convention roommate I once had who locked me out of the room while she had what would now be called a hook up with a book salesman, I’ve been told by a number of good friends that their own pre-AIDS conventions used to involve a lot of casual sex. My informants made the PAA sound like the lust hotbed. But maybe they were just bragging.

By: Anomie

Anomie — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:27:54 +0000

ahem. what junoksun (aka monsoon) means is that we learned through ACADEMIC RESEARCH - not firsthand experience - that there are a fair number of Penthouse Forum letters which take place at conferences.

just to clarify.