Academic Efficiency

"Academic efficiency" is my internal term for maximizing the use of one's time. Oftentimes, I think the people who succeed best in our world are those with a knack for self-organization, not to mention self-motivation. For a graduate student, this means juggling classes, both teaching and taking, thinking about your next step in the program, and dealing with graduate school's needless and seemingly mandated endemic poverty. For an early career academic, efficiency means constantly -- and I mean constantly -- thinking of new additions for one's C.V.

Since I've finished up my encyclopedia entry for The Literary Encyclopedia on Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, I've been pondering "academic efficiency" once again.** The chain of events leading to this entry is pretty awesome and amazing, but think about this -- out of that one Paris conference on Le Guin, I've squeezed out the following publications:

• 1 conference presentation (plus 5 days in Paris!)
• 1 conference report
• 1 book chapter
• 1 encyclopedia entry.

Three more C.V. lines, in other words, than most people squeeze out of a conference. (Granted, the conference report and the encyclopedia entry count for little, academically, but still.) Contrast that with how grad students unfortunately tend to use conferences -- just a single line, and sometimes barely even that. A few years ago, I remember going to South Central MLA. An organizer told me about their attendance issues. Too many participants would show up, read their paper, and leave immediately without attending any other panels. In fact, another grad student of my acquaintance didn't even bother to show up to her own panel; tellingly, she never finished her program.

Much "academic efficiency," though, is just luck and keeping one's eyes open. For example, I only ever went to the Le Guin conference in Paris because, quite randomly, I had earlier been invited to a "New Voices in Tolkien Scholarship" panel for the IMC in Leeds, England; the organizer happened to remember me from Kalamazoo the previous year. Well, since -- again, quite randomly -- I had been planning a trip overseas with my partner, who's European, that was extraordinarily convenient.

Just a few days after accepting, I saw the announcement for the Le Guin conference, either on the SFRA or the IAFA listservs, can't remember which. By another amazing coincidence, this conference, set in Paris, was happening two weeks prior to the IMC Leeds conference. Voilà -- luck and paying attention.

The rest is history. I did the conference report because I knew Fafnir publishes such things. The book chapter emerged because, although I had no real plans for converting my presentation into something useful, the Le Guin conference organizers were putting together a book, so no reason not to. Finally, the encyclopedia entry flowed quite naturally from my presentation research on The Dispossessed, and the opportunity itself emerged because I knew the relevant subeditor for The Literary Encyclopedia,*** who just happened to need an entry on that particular Le Guin book.

So, all told, four (4) additional lines on my CV, plus one awesome trip to Paris, for around 2 1/2 months of discontinuous research, writing, and revising. . . . and all because I was randomly invited to a difference conference in Leeds altogether.


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 ** Of course, I never stop. And this post is coming a week late since I had to begin work immediately on my online monsters course. Thank goodness, that's done.
*** Dr. Dimitra Fimi, who actually is the same person who invited me to the IMC in Leeds. What a wonderfully lovely person.