On the Ghosts of Conferences Past

Scrooge Extinguishes the First of the Three Spirits (Project Gutenberg)

It’s interesting the things that trigger memories, especially when connected with trauma. Next week I am fortunate to be traveling to present at the 2020 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC). It is a great conference that I would highly recommend to anyone teaching political science. The conference is organized around tracks (e.g., I am on the Virtual Classroom track) and you get to know everyone in your track pretty well by the end. It is a collegial and more intimate environment than large national or regional conferences. I vastly prefer environments like this (my favorite being the state politics and policy conference) to APSA, Midwest, or Southern.

The last conference, 2017, was my first time attending TLC. That week was typically busy, me preparing for the conference and my wife preparing to solo parent our young boy. I was flying out the day after Peter’s second birthday. It was a Wednesday and my mom (Nana) called to wish him a happy birthday. I did not know that it would be the last time that I would talk to her. She was dealing with a bout of strep throat and sounded understandably tired. I promised to try to call her while I was traveling, but that never happened. A week later she died by suicide. The antibiotics she was prescribed for her strep throat counteracted the medication she took for depression. I have written elsewhere about the personal impact of the loss, as well as its professional impact, so I won’t rehash that here.

Like Ebenezer Scrooge, I would love to extinguish the ghost of this conference past. Part of doing so is making a point of going again. But the memory will always be there. I know I am not the only one that approaches conferences with difficult memories. For some, it is due to sexual harassment or assault (see this reporting on APSA). For others it is because of lousy treatment by members of their profession. For me, it is personal trauma that will forever be linked to memories of a conference. For some, returning to the conference is impossible. For me, returning will hopefully be healing; an at least partial extinguishing of ghosts.

2 responses

  1. This is so well written Dan. Your emotions come out over the loss of your mother in a very communicable way.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *