I forget, between going to them, how exhausting professional conferences can be. Don't get me wrong-- I love them, they are exciting and inspiring and I truly enjoy making connections with my professional colleagues and sharing my research and theirs-- but after two full days of this ADSA1 conference here in Wagga Wagga, NSW,2 I need a break.
Wagga Wagga is a six-hour drive inland from Sydney, during which one narrowly misses Canberra and one passes right by the town of Gundagai.3 Wagga's claim to fame is that it is the largest inland city in NSW.4 It's a good bit smaller, in other words, than Ann Arbor, Michigan, with or without the 35,000 University of Michigan students in residence. In any case, Wagga Wagga is the home of Charles Sturt University, the department of performing arts at which is hosting this year's ADSA conference.5 The contingent from the University of Sydney's Department of Performance Studies this year is large, though it consists mostly of postgrad students, including some who have never presented at a conference before.
Part of the exhaustion that I am feeling at this conference has to do with the fact that the rooms where the panels are being held are isolated from other buildings and a 10-minute drive from town, so there is nowhere convenient to sit out a session and chill, or chat, or get some recharging time. There is one bus from town to campus in the morning, and one in the early evening, and none in between, since the university is not in session this week.6 So, for the last two days, I've attended every single session, which I learned a few years back is inappropriate behavior at a conference.7
Another part of this exhaustion, though, comes from the fact that our streak of minor misfortunes on vacation has extended through to minor misfortunes on moving into our new place. When D left Sydney on Sunday afternoon, she left Chad to deal with the power company's claim that they would disconnect the power on Monday unless we could get a letter from the landlord saying we were the legal tenants.8 And, shortly after receiving that notice on Friday, we were told by a neighbor that the city council would be tearing down the building we live in come December. So, less than a week after moving in, we believed we would have the power shut off and be receiving an eviction notice shortly.
After a flurry of panicked emails and phone calls, it all seems to be worked out now, and in the end Chad was not left shivering in the dark Monday afternoon.9 That kind of frustration, though-- on top of the stress of moving in-- is draining.
We're five months in now, five months out. On schedule for another bout of ennui, some mild homesickness for kitties and wireless cafes and hot dogs that taste right. Now we start counting down instead of counting up, and so we are all the more sensitive to what work we have or have not gotten done since coming to Australia. Unfortunately for us, the days of least busy-ness are behind us now, and work will have to be fit in between visitors10 and D's research commitments, and a few more trips, and saying our goodbyes.
So, here's to our streak of misfortunes coming to an end soon, so we can be as
productive as we need to be.
;)
- D
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NOTES
1ADSA is the acronym for the professional organization
of theatre/performance academics in this part of the world. The name of this
organization, puzzlingly, is the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama, &
Performance Studies, which the more alert among us will note has more words than the
acronym has letters.
2Wagga Wagga, I've been told by Australians with an evil
glint in their eye, is "a town so nice they named it twice."
3Gundagai, the more alert among us will remember, is the
infamous home of the Dog on the Tuckerbox. See part II of our
February trip to Canberra and Melbourne for a refresher.
4This claiming is rather similar to the oft-cited fact
that Rockford, Illinois is the second-largest city in the US state of Illinois.
Second, that is, to Chicago, and not usually named on Americans' lists of "large
cities."
5Next year, the nice people D's been working with at the
University of Sydney will be hosting the 2006 ADSA conference. For those of you
utterly unfamiliar with the ways of academia, it is quite common for professional
organizations to hold an annual 3-4 day conference at which members present their
research in 15-minute papers. Many professional organizations also publish journals.
In the US, two of the professional organizations for Theatre & Performance are ASTR
(American Society for Theatre Research) and ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher
Education).
6It's winter, you see. But the Christmas holidays take
place over the summer break, so they just take a four-week break between terms in July
and August instead.
7Inappropriate in the sense that it is utterly draining
and exhausting, which negates the inspiring and re-invigorating effect that an
appropriately-attended conference should have.
8Of course, since we're subletting this place "under the
table," so to speak, a legal notice from the landlord is the one thing we cannot
produce.
9This pathetic image is not really that accurate, since
there is quite a bit of light that shines all night right into our apartment. Plus,
it's not dark in the afternoon anyway...
10It's now July, and the only visitors who have told
us that they are actually coming are D's parents, although there are at least two
others (Jason, Jeff) who have promised to come and a handful of others who might be
considering it.
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