The Symposium

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.