Recently many of the
graduate students at Clark’s English Department have been attending
conferences to showcase their work. Robert Karockai, a graduate student at the English Department, has been kind enough to
give us an account of his experience attending the HERA conference in
Washington D.C. All of us at the English Department would like to offer a
hearty congratulations to Robert, as well as all of the other Graduate students
who were able to present at conferences.
Without further ado, here is what Robert had to say about
his experience:
A few weeks ago, I presented a paper at the HERA
(humanities education research association) conference in Washington D.C. This
was my first academic conference, first airplane ride, and first time out of
New England. Full of anxiety and self-doubt, I arrived in Washington and took a
train to the most luxurious hotel I've ever seen. Immediately upon entering the
Fairfax on Embassy Row (which I learned later was the childhood
residence of Al Gore and Jacqueline Kennedy's favorite place to have a cocktail
during the "Camelot" years ), I was greeted by a HERA representative,
given a schedule of events, and invited to an informal cocktail reception in
the hotel lounge. Within forty-five minutes I found myself in the midst
of an absolute Bacchanalia populated by academics. I learned much at that
conference, perhaps foremost among them the absolute joy of being in the
presence of seventy-five drunken P.h.d.'s. This first evening, sans drunkenness, set
the tone for much of the rest of the conference. Simply put, I met an untold
number of scholars whom I had become comfortable with and exchanged ideas with
them. The conference became the perfect marriage of academia and blooming
friendships as it progressed. My presentation went extremely well, in part
because I suspect a number in the audience enjoyed my Worcester
accent, which I employed without restraint. I left four days later feeling
genuinely sad. My experience was so overwhelmingly
positive that I plan to search for another conference in another part of the
country as soon as I can afford to attend one. Thanks to Prof. Lisa Kasmer for
teaching me to write and present a conference paper; Prof. Meredith Neuman for
her almost supernatural ability to point out the exact sources I needed to add
to improve my paper, and Prof. Peggy Korcoras for introducing me to the beauty
and complexity I found within Hawthorne's short stories.
Yours,
Robert Karockai M.A. candidate
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