If the weather forecasts (all of which are using the term "blizzard") are even close to being true, travel to and within Boston tomorrow will be a nightmare. Several people I know have canceled their trips, and a student who is on the program has just learned that the chair and commentator in her session will not be in attendance.
I'm not sure what the impact of this will be on the DOOM and JUSTICE Festival. I'm going to try to be there tomorrow. But there's a very good chance that all flights will be canceled. You may have to carry on without me....
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11 comments:
Why couldn't the APA mandarins settle on Fort Lauderdale as their permanent place for the Eastern division annual meetings?
And this is the discipline in charge of explicating RATIONALITY for the rest of humanity????
I'm on the group program and just canceled my flights.
My flight was canceled for me by my airline. No way I'm getting to MA tomorrow and I was going back home on Wednesday anyways. Fuck it.
I'm snowed in presently.
I think the Doom & Justice Festival starts...NOW. Everyone--drink up.
Anon: 2:35 I agree with you entirely. Even if the timing of the Eastern APA can't be changed, let's get a location that's cheaper, easier to get to from the West Coast, and less likely to be snowbound. Enough already!
Maybe this year's blizzard will prove to be a turning point for hiring tradition. Skype and phone interviews may prove necessary this year for a sufficient amount of interviews such that people are finally, forcibly weaned from doing Eastern APA interviews.
CHEERS!
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Just when I was cool enough to know about the doom & justice, it gets canceled.
729: drinking right along with ya.
i stopped going to the eastern as soon as i got a job. there are so many reasons not to go, including sending a message to the knuckleheads who schedule this meeting at this time in boston, ny, philly, etc. my department has moved to skype interviews in advance of on campus visits with no discernible loss in informational input and with a great deal of financial savings. can't imagine why all departments haven't done the same.
Does hiring drive the APA schedule as it is now? If so, why couldn't the eastern be moved to March and the other two distributed across late spring and the Fall? Or the Eastern go Fall with March and late spring Centrals and Fall Pacifics (or reverse them--why should east-to-west location determine chronology?). There is no budgetary magic to Eastern APAs as far as I can see especially given that the offers typically come in the next calendar year, and that fiscal years are variable from state-to-state. We seriously need to stop this late-December insanity of the Eastern APA.
I think we look for alternate meeting dates (Dec 27-30) in vain. But I do think that the December meeting should be moved to a more central and warmer location. Central so that the travel burden is more evenly distributed; warmer so that the December weather doesn't pose an additional source of fuckedupness.
Why not have the December meeting in, say, Dallas or New Orleans? It used to be the case that only big cities in the Northeast had the facilities for a meeting the size of the December APA. But this is clearly no longer the case...
At least one of my interviews has already been canceled on account of the weather. Another SC reports things are still on.
The MLA moved their meeting time this year from the traditional between Christmas and New Years' slot to Jan 6-9 or so. So that's certainly possible.
Also, they're doing it LA.
If the f'in English departments can pull it off...
I propose that the Eastern APA be held in a Southern location, such as the Everglades. I doubt that the area would be too expensive during this time of year, and the location seems appropriate for those on the market. The smoker near an alligator farm just seems to make sense.
http://www.everglades.com/
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