I got back last night from a triumphant conference in Hattiesburg, much to the delight of all my readers, I'm sure. =) You people had to read about all my ups and downs with this paper, so hopefully you'll be pleased to know that it was a success. If not, well... too bad. I rule.

The conference had a lot of great papers, including a really cool keynote speech from this guy Kevin Swinden, whom I'd never heard of and who talked about how we as a scholarly community need to re-evaluate the way we think about chromaticism. It gave me a lot to think about, and there were some great questions at the end.

I read my paper on Friday afternoon, and though nobody had huge issues with the way I analyzed the song, a few people asked about things that had struck them in listening to my presentation, and I handled the questions well. The guy who had most intimidated me in conferences past didn't say a word, so that was anti-climactic but, in a way, reassuring. I suppose it's good that no one said, "Well, this was interesting, but why on earth didn't you take such-and-such approach?" or "I don't agree with your reading at all." At the same, though, it would have made me feel a little cooler if there had been more substantive discussion after my paper, but it was pretty soon after lunch, and I wasn't out to change the world. I wanted a good first-paper experience, and that's what I got. My profs were really proud of me, and several people came up to me afterward and told me how much they had enjoyed my paper and how they were looking forward to taking the handout and score home and studying it in more depth.

My friend Matt read his paper right after mine, and his was followed by even fewer points of discussion than mine was. I think he might have gotten two comments, but he was happy with it, and we were both relieved that it was over. To blow off some steam, all of the LSU students who attended (there were six of us) hung out in our hotel room on Friday night, drinking some Abita Turbodog (a local beer that's a bit like Guinness), listening to music, talking, and then playing an awesome game of Boggle after two of the guys left to go back to their room at a different hotel. I had been hearing from Matt for roughly a year about how much he likes Boggle and how he always beats everyone in his family when they play, so I was sort of intimidated by the idea of playing with him, and neither of us owns the game anyway. Jennifer, however, does own it, and when she and Matt played for the first time a few weeks ago, she wiped the floor with him. Matt, of course, demanded a rematch, and so Jennifer had kept Boggle in the trunk of her car and pulled it out on Friday night. The first three rounds of Boggle were for Matt and Jennifer only, which amused me, and he ended up beating her by one point. I think he felt satisfied enough with that performance.

After their head-to-head battle ended, Rob and I were allowed to play, and we got in four good rounds. It was fun to see the learning curve in progress: for example, in the first round, everyone got the word "tons," but only one person got "snot," the same letters in reverse order. The next time it came up, we all got "tons" and "snot." There were similar instances with more obscure words that only one of us thought of the first time and then everyone caught on to later. The interesting thing about playing with four people is that it's pretty difficult to get a unique word that no one else has thought of, and I was pretty proud of the few times I managed to get unique five-letter words like "sorry" and "nifty." After four rounds had passed, Matt had 5 points, Rob had 6, I had 24, and Jennifer embarrassed us all with 57. Yay, girls. =) I have a feeling that there will be much more playing of Boggle between classes in the future...

The four of us didn't end up falling asleep until 1 a.m., mostly because we kept talking after we had turned off the lights. Rob had chosen to sleep on the spot of floor under the sink and counter so that he wouldn't get stepped on, but it was really funny to the rest of us, particularly when he wanted to say something to us and would actually crawl out from under the sink to do so. Matt and I got very giggly and kept telling him, "Get back under the sink!" We finally all fell asleep around 1, and we had to wake up at 6 to get showers and breakfasts and be at the conference site by 8. I barely made it through the morning to lunch, especially since the hotel coffee was really weak and there wasn't much left at the conference site by the time we got around to looking for it. I even tried walking to a Starbucks in the library, but it opened really late on Saturdays. Sigh. The business meeting at lunch was fun, though, since I was the secretary and was taking the minutes, and people kept making jokes and then asking me if I was writing them down. I was scribbling furiously for about 20 minutes, but taking and then typing up the minutes is the extent of my secretarial duties for the entire year, so it was fine by me. I have now advanced to Vice President, according to the rotation, and if I'm still around for the 2008 conference, I'll be the President then. Incidentally, the guy who was President this year is Canadian, so he temporarily re-named the office Prime Minister, and the Treasurer was re-named Minister of Finance. This gives you an idea of the general silliness and lack of order in our society. =) I love it.

Matt, Rob, and I had a nice drive home yesterday (Jennifer was staying with a friend in Jackson, so she drove separately), and I made it back to my house around 8 p.m. After filling Jack in on the salient details of the conference that I hadn't told him over the phone, I promptly dozed on the sofa until he insisted that I go to bed around 10. I'm really happy with the way my paper went, and the whole rest of the conference was so much fun that I can't wait for next year, when we plan to have a joint meeting with the regional musicology chapter on our campus. Fun times, these conferences.

Labels: friends, school

• posted by erica 3/12/2006 09:45:00 PM
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