So, I'm writing this from Murfreesboro, TN where I am sitting in my room at the Double Tree full of knowledge and free wine. All this is because I am at the Conference on John Milton where I got to present a paper on Wycliffe's possible influence on the prose writing of John Milton.
What's really cool about conferences like these are that you are sitting around with all the people you reference in your own papers. I got to speak to Michael Lieb about my paper, who told me that I was "on solid theoretical ground," which made me feel good for a second. I met John Shawcross, a seventeenth-century scholar whose work I very much admire. Then when I ran into him in the hallway this morning, he said, "Good morning Jeff," and I thought, holy-cow, John Shawcross knows my name. He's a tiny old man who is still completely brilliant and who walks around during a party because he doesn't want to sit. All these people are extremely generous people who really want to bring young scholars along in the field.
But alas, Sunday night I will be home which, on one hand is really good because I miss my wife, but I am also terrified because I have to go back to my own desk where I have a two foot stack of student papers to grade.
1 comment:
Kewl. Great thing about learning curves. They lead straight up, and they're difficult. But they almost always lead up . . . a better place to be than down.
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