Submitted for your reading pleasure, here is a short story I wrote several years ago entitled The Symposium. Largely autobiographical, I have always found this story funny because it so succinctly sums up the state of mind I was in for several years, and with its single-sentence coda, predicts the future with an uncanny accuracy.
The Symposium
It was about eleven o’clock when I stumbled into the Union
lobby with a throbbing headache and in the grips of a sickly, cold sweat that
had completely soaked into my clothes on the trip over. My wrinkled oxford
shirt pressed against my back as I reached for the door and I felt a damp chill
shoot through my extremities. I found a corner off to the right side of the
entrance and fished a sandwich bag filled with ibuprofen from my leather
satchel. I quickly washed down two tabs with a week-old bottle of water I also
happened to have on me and leaned up against the wall to conserve strength.
These physical symptoms were
largely due to a late evening from which I had departed only hours prior, but I
attributed the majority of my present misery to the last two years of my life,
which had been spent on the fourth floor of the ugliest building at the
university studying the most useless graduate curriculum offered there. Now, at
the end of my last semester, I was required to attend one more symposium
sponsored by my department, which was nothing more than an academic pissing
contest put on by anxious PhDs voraciously vying for tenure in front of an
audience comprised of deans, fellow professors and disillusioned graduate
students.
A portable marquee carelessly positioned
at the entrance to the lobby told me I could find the symposium on the second
floor in room 203. I glanced around for stairs but found an elevator first,
which I reluctantly boarded, knowing that that I would soon be staring blankly
at a podium while fighting back an urge to doze off in the dull ramblings of a
dusty professor.
I closed my eyes on the ride up.
Strange contrails of reddish orange floated across a black void from left to
right. The elevator reached its destination, passing up the floor slightly
before it harshly reversed course and caused a nauseating sensation of
freefall. I grabbed the railing against the back of the elevator and steadied
myself as the sticky doors forced themselves open, giving way to a common area
with pair of bucket chairs separated by a small accent table. I stepped off the
elevator and immediately heard the unmistakable drone of academia drifting from
the auditorium somewhere off to my right. I edged around the corner, carefully
holding my satchel so that the plastic fasteners didn’t clink against each
other and compromise my position. Through propped-open double doors I could see
a panel of approximately 15 professors seated around several tables that
surrounded a podium. They sat quietly, occasionally cocking their heads and
scribbling down notes on torn-up legal pads. Beyond the professors I could see
several couches and bucket chairs occupied by slouching graduate students with
glazed stares across their faces. Several of them had discreetly obstructed
their line of sight with the speaker using backpacks and jackets so they could drift
off for a few minutes if things got too dull. I waited out the current
presentation in the dimly lit hallway until I heard applause and stirring,
signaling a safe time to enter without catching the glare of watchful professors.
I was two hours late.
I walked through the double doors,
exchanging nods with professors and fellow graduate students, limiting my
communication to body language. No one seemed to question my truancy. As students
and professors got up to stretch and enjoy the complimentary coffee before the
next presentation, I found an empty chair and fell into it, letting the
surprisingly plush foam cushions engulf me. At least the accommodations were
comfortable. I surveyed the auditorium, which was really a converted banquet
hall hastily thrown together to facilitate this drudgery. At another function
the room might actually have been pleasant, but I was in no mood to appreciate
it at the moment. Noting the cleverness of my fellow students’
slouch-behind-the-backpack trick, I placed my satchel on my lap and let myself
sink deeper into the chair. The throbbing in my head seemed to ease up as I
became one with the foam padding. Just as I got comfortable, the next
presentation began.
The speaker introduced himself and
mentioned what university he was from, some place in Indiana I had never heard
of. He wore a tweed jacket over a pink dress shirt that he had clumsily tucked
into pleated Dockers void of a belt. I couldn’t see his shoes, but imagined
they were worn-out loafers that were no doubt hiding hole-ridden argyle dress
socks. He distributed an outline that looked to have been made in 1983 and
started into his presentation. As the copies came around, I pulled out a spiral
notebook from my satchel and opened it up to a blank page. I scribbled down the
date and the title of the presentation, though it was largely illegible. It
didn’t matter. For the next 45 minutes I would feign taking notes and pretend
to seem interested in the points listed on the outline. My appearance here was
strictly political, and I could wear a crooked smile with the convincingness of
a Richard Nixon or John Edwards. In an hour I would be free and in another week
I would be done with school.
I had decided a year into graduate
school that I would have nothing to do with academics after graduation, an
admittedly foolish idea considering the impracticality of my degree outside the
academic realm. In a defiant affront to reason, I convinced myself that I would
nevertheless find an application for my degree somewhere in the working world.
This decision was based in part on the fact that my once healthy enthusiasm for
the humanities had dwindled to a passing interest after three semesters of
coursework. Additionally, I had quickly found that the ostensibly romantic
professorial career track was in reality a lonely life. PhDs went where they
could get jobs, which were often located in two-bit college towns far off the
beaten path of civilization like the one I lived in. I couldn’t stomach the
thought of living here permanently, passing the same yellow cinderblock walls
day-in and day-out in some forgotten corner of the university. I wanted no part
of that life.
The speaker’s voice lacked a
commanding presence and he stumbled through his presentation with the kind of
awkwardness typically reserved for adolescence. He bobbed back and forth as he
stared down at his notes, occasionally looking up to make sure his visual aid
was still in sync with his paper. His visible discomfort seemed to ripple
across the audience. While the professors took diligent notes, the graduate
students shuffled in their seats, doing anything they could to ignore the
speaker’s nervous ticks. As he meandered through his presentation, my eyes
stared unfocused across a barren periphery. I could no longer hear the
presentation as I floated tranquilly in a standstill of time. My headache and
cold sweats were gone.
The sound of clapping suddenly
snapped me out of my numbing daydream and I sat up to look around. The speaker
had concluded his presentation and was now taking questions from the panel of
PhDs, who fought like a hungry pack of dogs to get a word in here or there. The
questions were loaded with convoluted academic language that only they could understand.
PhDs had a penchant for creating their own terms, a sort of survival mechanism
that ensured the continuance and exclusivity of their profession. If what they
said sounded intelligent, who was going to argue with them, or more
importantly, cut their funding? Somewhere in the back of my mind, beyond my
weary view of academics, I couldn’t help but applaud their efforts; they were
the top practitioners of bullshit, and made a comfortable living doing it. They
had beaten the system in a way,
something that the nine-to-fivers could only dream about doing.
The growing sound of restless
bodies and rustling papers signaled the symposium would soon be over. The PhDs
would shake hands and congratulate one another on a job well done. The visiting
professors would return to their hotels, pack their things and get the hell out
of town, only to return next year and do it all over again. The deans would
return to their offices, confident that the exchange of ideas they had just
heard was of a sufficient quality as to ensure the safety of the liberal arts
college from budget cuts. The graduate students would complete their coursework
in the next week and walk across the stage to receive a diploma anticlimactically
marking the end of a stressful two years. Several of them would go on to earn a
PhD with the hope of one day sitting on a panel or even presenting their own
ideas at a symposium. The others would find positions at high schools across
the country, where they would be underappreciated and underpaid despite their
impressive qualifications.
As for me, I was off to join
Corporate America, to climb the golden ladder to a corner office with a window
and a particleboard desk with an oak façade. I would wear a suit every day and
delegate. I would buy a black Toyota and show them all I meant business. Most
importantly, I was going to be the exception to the rule.
Two years later I found employment
working part-time as a level one associate at a national retail chain.
