Sunday, January 9, 2005

I've Been Away . . .

I've been at the annual convention of the American Philological Association (known to the world at large as the Classics Geek Convention) in Boston. I won't bore you with the details of the scholarhship presented there, since many of the topics discussed are obscure even to professional classics geeks like myself. Instead, I'll confine myself to some trivial observations:

(1) I used to think of the APA convention as having the highest concentration of tweed, corduroy, and comfortable shoes to be found anywhere on the planet, and there's still plenty of it there, especially among the older scholars. But I noticed that the younger generation (which doesn't include myself) was dressing considerably more snappily. Along those same lines . . .

(2) My friend Bruce, a Bostonian and a non-classicist who stopped by the convention center to take me out to dinner, remarked that the lobby was "crawling with babes." Classics babes?I thought he was joking at first, but then I looked around. There wasn't a dowdy academic spinster in sight. Rather, we were surrounded by brainy and beautiful women. (I shouldn't have been surprised; I married one of those, after all.) Academic demographics are changing.

(3) Classics scholars don't get any social prestige from what they do, and they don't get paid much money for it, but they really love learning, scholarship, and teaching. I admire that a lot.

3 comments:

Lenslinger said...

Great Scott! You've described the polar opposite of my industry...Welcome Back!

Sarah said...

I admire it as well. Maybe being brainy, beautiful and versed in the classics will become fashionable as well. Wouldn't it be something if hip were to mean knowing how to swear in Latin or being able to sight read Attic Greek?

Jim Rosenberg said...

Dear Penthouse,

I never thought I'd be writing, because these things never happent to me. While attending the plenary session of the American Philological Association, I made eye contact with an attractive classics Professor. Later, at the "Mapping the Entrails: The Art of Greek Hepatomancy" seminar, she openly flirted with me.

[Explicit depiction of sexual activity goes here.

Sincerely,

David Wharton