![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshF-list post has been further delayed by the rather f'd-up thing that happened yesterday. It was about 9:30, and I was just thinking about checking Priority*, when someone called my cell phone.
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is Professor Kitsikopoulos, from NYU. You remember we were in touch some months ago about the LaPietra Conference...?"
"Oh yes...""
I hastily racked my brain in an attempt to actually remember. This was way back in the fall, when I was working three part-time jobs and didn't know what the #$@#$^%% I would be doing in the Spring. A colleague mentioned the conference to me, and that they were desperate for an expert on medieval German economic history. Since I'm only vaguely an expert (I know a certain amount about Germany, but I do economic history mostly by the seat of my pants), I figured it was a bit of a long shot, but I decided what the heck and applied. Kitsikopoulos, who was organizing, got in touch with me, to give me some of the details (to be held in NYU's site in Florence, and feature mostly anglophone historians who would be experts on various countries in Europe); but ultimately found someone else.
That someone else had apparently now quit.
So Professor K. presumably sorted through his sent mail folder, found me, somehow found my cell phone, and called me up to grill me as to my credentials and interest in getting on board, however belatedly, with this project. There were a couple of complications. First, the conference was in two weeks. Second, they weren't going to pony up to fly me over. This was, to put it mildly, a bit of a problem. I nervously mentioned this, at which point he clarified that they didn't really expect me to show up, given that I was not going to produce a paper in that time.** Cheapskates, I thought nonetheless.
What I was actually being asked to do was possibly write a paper for possible inclusion in a published version of the proceedings that would possibly be printed by Cambridge UP. Further complicating matters was the fact that Kitsikopoulos obviously wanted someone more established in the field, and so wondered whether I could find someone else who could co-author the thing with me. [Whether this was an honest intention, or a thinnly-disguised attempt to track down somebody else to do the job instead without having to do any research, is something that I'm still not sure of.] The whole situation, in short, was foyado beyond belief, and put my brain straight into panic mode.
At that point, I clearly wasn't going to get priority done. I begged off work for an hour or two, and frantically emailed my adviser, my adviser's friend at Uni Mannheim, and several reference librarians, before plunging off in the direction of the reference room in search of background on Postan and lists of anybody who'd done work on the German economy and the Crise de Féodalité in the last ten years. As K. had noted, there weren't many.
[In the end, I met with my adviser, who after being apoplectic that I wasn't being invited to the conference, then mollified when I explained that it was going to be a bit further away than the NYU campus, advised me to stick to my guns, point out that everybody else in the field was booked up, and stress my own ability to carry out the task proposed, It's gonna be mostly secondary anyway, and if there's one thing I know about from Constance, it's independent peasants and Nobles Who Go Bankrupt. But that was later.]
For the rest of Monday, my brain was still fizzing, and I ultimately decided that I needed to combination kvetch and boast about the f'd-up situation, Which is why I ended up having drinks and watching the South Park Movie with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
straussmonster...after some scheduling difficulties, a trip to the Wine Thief, and courting catching pneumonia by running in the rain and a burned tongue eating at Ivy Noodle. But I don't even want to get into that.
[Though why anyone, least of all me, eats at Ivy Noodle twice is a bit of a mystery. There are places where watching your food being prepared would be considered a feature that would bring repeat business, but this is not one of them.]
ANYWAY, as of press I am still waiting to hear back about what's going to happen with this. And yes, if I find out that I am going to unexpectedly get published, I will let everyone know.
* Priority books are those that (for whatever reason) have to be cataloged Right Away. Since, due to the haste of processing them, they frequently don't have real records yet, this is a rather irksome and complicated task, and something of a time suck. Hence it rotates around the cataloging team; this week happens to be my turn.
** This was reassuring, though it occurred to me to wonder what field of medieval studies he was in. Kazoo papers regularly get written en route to Michigan.
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is Professor Kitsikopoulos, from NYU. You remember we were in touch some months ago about the LaPietra Conference...?"
"Oh yes...""
I hastily racked my brain in an attempt to actually remember. This was way back in the fall, when I was working three part-time jobs and didn't know what the #$@#$^%% I would be doing in the Spring. A colleague mentioned the conference to me, and that they were desperate for an expert on medieval German economic history. Since I'm only vaguely an expert (I know a certain amount about Germany, but I do economic history mostly by the seat of my pants), I figured it was a bit of a long shot, but I decided what the heck and applied. Kitsikopoulos, who was organizing, got in touch with me, to give me some of the details (to be held in NYU's site in Florence, and feature mostly anglophone historians who would be experts on various countries in Europe); but ultimately found someone else.
That someone else had apparently now quit.
So Professor K. presumably sorted through his sent mail folder, found me, somehow found my cell phone, and called me up to grill me as to my credentials and interest in getting on board, however belatedly, with this project. There were a couple of complications. First, the conference was in two weeks. Second, they weren't going to pony up to fly me over. This was, to put it mildly, a bit of a problem. I nervously mentioned this, at which point he clarified that they didn't really expect me to show up, given that I was not going to produce a paper in that time.** Cheapskates, I thought nonetheless.
What I was actually being asked to do was possibly write a paper for possible inclusion in a published version of the proceedings that would possibly be printed by Cambridge UP. Further complicating matters was the fact that Kitsikopoulos obviously wanted someone more established in the field, and so wondered whether I could find someone else who could co-author the thing with me. [Whether this was an honest intention, or a thinnly-disguised attempt to track down somebody else to do the job instead without having to do any research, is something that I'm still not sure of.] The whole situation, in short, was foyado beyond belief, and put my brain straight into panic mode.
At that point, I clearly wasn't going to get priority done. I begged off work for an hour or two, and frantically emailed my adviser, my adviser's friend at Uni Mannheim, and several reference librarians, before plunging off in the direction of the reference room in search of background on Postan and lists of anybody who'd done work on the German economy and the Crise de Féodalité in the last ten years. As K. had noted, there weren't many.
[In the end, I met with my adviser, who after being apoplectic that I wasn't being invited to the conference, then mollified when I explained that it was going to be a bit further away than the NYU campus, advised me to stick to my guns, point out that everybody else in the field was booked up, and stress my own ability to carry out the task proposed, It's gonna be mostly secondary anyway, and if there's one thing I know about from Constance, it's independent peasants and Nobles Who Go Bankrupt. But that was later.]
For the rest of Monday, my brain was still fizzing, and I ultimately decided that I needed to combination kvetch and boast about the f'd-up situation, Which is why I ended up having drinks and watching the South Park Movie with
straussmonster...after some scheduling difficulties, a trip to the Wine Thief, and courting catching pneumonia by running in the rain and a burned tongue eating at Ivy Noodle. But I don't even want to get into that.[Though why anyone, least of all me, eats at Ivy Noodle twice is a bit of a mystery. There are places where watching your food being prepared would be considered a feature that would bring repeat business, but this is not one of them.]
ANYWAY, as of press I am still waiting to hear back about what's going to happen with this. And yes, if I find out that I am going to unexpectedly get published, I will let everyone know.
* Priority books are those that (for whatever reason) have to be cataloged Right Away. Since, due to the haste of processing them, they frequently don't have real records yet, this is a rather irksome and complicated task, and something of a time suck. Hence it rotates around the cataloging team; this week happens to be my turn.
** This was reassuring, though it occurred to me to wonder what field of medieval studies he was in. Kazoo papers regularly get written en route to Michigan.
