too many conferences, too little time

There's always some conference or another at my school. Most of them are not within my areas of scholarly interest, but I usually try to stop by some panel for the sake of learning for learning's sake. But I'm shorter on time these days, and there are so many other colloquiums that are much more useful and interesting to me these days, mostly sponsored by other departments. There's a great series at the business school and at the sociology department this semester.

I feel kind of bad though. X. Trapnel is in town for a political theory conference, and I'm hosting him, yet there's hardly any panels I can imagine wanting to attend. I feel bad as a friend, and bad as a scholar. For all my interdisciplinariness, I am becoming quite a good deal more focused and narrow, and I can't tell right now whether that's good or bad. It's more efficient and sanity saving (less running around campus and galavanting across the nation, more working on things that I need to work on), to be sure. Ah, well, I can't be Super Interdisciplinary Girl.*


*I am trying to come up with a good Halloween costume. I got a superhero mask as a present. I generally don't like dressing up on Halloween, because it's my birthday and the holiday just steals my thunder, you know? But this mask must be used. I was thinking about going as Super Emo Girl, plus name tag, and looking dour and wearing leggings or skinny jeans (ugh) and a plaid snap shirt with some beaten up Converses and some kind of bedraggled knitted scarf, except that I'm not emo, do not have fugly clothes, am generally cheerful and like pop music. Like Mariah. I was also thinking of going as The Zeitgeist Avenger, but how does one dress as the spirit of the ages? Hmm.