Back in fall of 2010, I sent an email to one of my professors. I simply said that I was interested in the kind of research that he did, and that if he needed a TA or an assistant on any of his research projects I would be glad to help. He asked if I could stop by his office, and the next thing I knew I had a job as a TA/RA in the linguistics department.
Fast forward to last week. On Friday (the 10th), Rachel took me to the Provo airport early in the morning. And, by the way, let me tell you, the Provo airport is something else. First of all, I didn't even know there was a Provo airport prior to this. We drove up, and all there was was a single relatively small building. We could see the airplane's tail poking out from behind it. Rachel dropped me off, and I walked in with a few other equally disoriented people. The inside of the airport looked like a cross between a gift shop and a visitor's center, i.e. not very airporty. There was one check-in terminal, one departure gate, and we got to walk across the tarmac to the plane, which is cool because you don't get to do that all that often anymore.
Anyway, I headed off to San Francisco. From the airport there, I took the BART over to Berkeley. (BART, for the record, is excellent. You know, just in case anyone values my opinion of public transportation systems.) Then I walked a couple of blocks to the seedy Travelodge that I was constantly afraid someone was going to try to break into the whole time I was there.
It was a long night of watching cartoons and re-checking the door locks every so often. The next morning, I walked over to UC Berkeley campus (which, by the way, is gorgeous) and up to the building where the Berkeley Linguistics Society's 38th annual linguistics conference (aka BLS 38) was being held. It was weird checking in and saying "yes" when they asked "Are you presenting today?"
Dr. Eddington was about two hours late (he ended up taking the wrong train, so had to backtrack and it set him back a good while), so I went to the first few presentations by myself. The first guy presenting talked about some syntax thingamajig that some whatsit language or other did. Not really up my alley. That's not the important part. The important part is that when it came to the question-and-answer section of his presentation, it was brutal. One lady stopped just short of telling him that his entire project was complete garbage. Needless to say, I was terrified. The guy who was presenting answered people's criticisms pretty well, but he was a full-blown professor. And I still had about nine hours to worry about all this before it was my turn to present.
Dr. Eddington showed up, and during the lunch break we walked around Berkeley for a bit and got some Ethiopian food. (By the way, if anyone knows what the heck they use to make that squishy yet somehow tortilla-esque bread object that you use in lieu of utensils, please tell me, because I could not figure it out. It was like eating some kind of delicious sponge.)
We headed back to the conference, and listened to a bunch of people talking about phonetics, which was more interesting because I understood more of what they were saying. We ditched a little early to go set up the presentation, which is good because we ended up having oh-so-many technical difficulties. (It's fun when both you and your professor are Linux users, and the tech support guys at the conference can't help you because they are too busy being flabbergasted that you don't own a Mac. "Here's the Mac adapter." "It's a Linux system." "A what now?" Useless).
Then came the presentation. Sadly, I can't actually tell you all that much about how it went, because I don't actually remember very well. I stood up at the front of a room full of old crotchety linguists, and then the next thing I remember is asking, "So, questions?" I do vaguely remember people laughing at my "Mormon swearing aversion" joke. From what I'm told, though, it seems to have gone well, and a lot of people came up and talked to me afterwards. No one even told me that the project was garbage, like they did to that guy earlier in the day. Maybe they sensed my weakness and took pity on me; I don't know.
That night, after the wine and cheese social (where I learned that sparkling mineral water tastes ultra-gross), there was a banquet with Indian food and lots and lots of beer. It's a weird kind of feeling to have a world-renowned phonologist drunkenly telling you dirty jokes. Quite weird. Dr. Eddington and I had a deep conversation about the degree to which we didn't understand the point of getting drunk. Meanwhile, everyone else in the room laughed really loudly and sometimes bumped into tables.
I walked back to my room that night, simultaneously terrified that I was going to get murdered on the street and trying to remind myself that I was a rational, brave grown-up and that I would be fine. The latter ended up being true (well, minus the brave part), and I once again watched cartoons late into the night. The next day was mostly spent in the airport; BYU changed my itinerary without telling me, so that was fun/horrible. My departure gate must have changed at least fifty times (okay, more like five), so I was constantly walking back and forth in the airport trying not to get left behind. In the end, my flight home was an hour late, and almost got cancelled because the crew was within minutes of hitting their duty time and having to quit for the day.
The good news is I eventually got home. The even better news is that, like the responsible adult that I am, I skipped all my classes the next day and slept in, which was awesome. The absolute most-best news of all is forthcoming, but it's late and the rest gets to wait for another time when I feel like writing more. The basic gist of the story, though, is that this whole trip was pretty much the culmination of everything I've been working on for the past year or two now.
0 comments:
Post a Comment