Some weeks ago (about six), I wrote a little paper on the aduentus Saxonum and submitted it for consideration to the National Undergraduate Literature Conference hosted by Weber State University in Ogden, UT. I believe that I mentioned this before. At any rate, while waiting for a decision, I wrestled with whether it was something I really wanted to do. While some of this was, no doubt, a product of me preparing myself for rejection, I must admit that Ogden is not exactly my first choice for a destination vacation. Further, I’d also been experiencing a bit of aggravation because dilettante flights and hotels are not precisely inexpensive and although I enjoy a certain standard of living, the best adjectives to describe my mode of living are “genteel” and “impoverished.”
When I arrived home from school on Wednesday, I received a text message from my friend and colleague J. who had also submitted a paper to the conference advising me to check my email. So, I duly checked my email thinking it could be anything from an email cancelling classes owing to the snow advisories, something from one of the Powers that Are in the department, or goodness only knows what. Anyway, there, sitting in my inbox, was an unread email from Conference Management To (the name was truncated) with the subject line of 2011 National Undegraduate Literature Conference. Here is a blow-by-blow description of what occurred, viz.:
Me: <opens email and begins to read> This doesn’t look too good, sounds rather like the boilerplate of a rejection letter. O hullo! What’s this? We are pleased to inform you that your submission was accepted. <leaps from chair and performs a buck-and-wing dance before legging it down the hall to the sitting room>
“I say, roommate! They’ve accepted my paper! I’m off to Ogden!”
<exit, stage left, while performing a species of pastoral dance>
I then contacted J. and began making travel arrangements. These were finalized in short order: aeroplane tickets purchased, hotel room reserved, registration to the conference completed, vegetarian option at the banquet chosen, and the cocktail service indicated as required. Some may wonder why I chose the vegetarian option when I’m clearly not a vegetarian. The answer is quite simple. Our options for the banquet were a rib eye steak, mahi mahi, or a vegetarian option. I’m not, at the best of times, inclined to giant slabs of meat and I distrust on principle the fish option in a landlocked state. Consequently, the only thing which didn’t strike me as potentially poisonous or likely to result in my requiring an immediate angioplasty (especially after I checked out the *ahem* unique restaurant where the banquet is being held) was the vegetarian option.
Huzzahs and congratulations! Assuming, of course, one is to be congratulated upon receipt of an obligation to go to Utah.
Well, I look at it as an opportunity to burnish my vita since I’ll be applying to grad schools this fall. That just filled me with a bit of panic, but I digress. Anyway, Utah certainly isn’t my dream destination, but this is the sort of thing we do to demonstrate our intestinal fortitude as academics, no?
At least I have my trip to Scottsdale, AZ two weeks after that for the Medieval Academy conference.