I try my hand at academic schmoozing

All stories of academia in the days of yore seem to revolve around two themes: there is the "good old days" narrative, in which the young professor finds a college/University she likes, has an amiable chat with the president or dean or whoever, and then is informed at the end of lunch that she's been hired. That's the kind of story told during departmental teas that makes me wish for a seal club (to use on either myself or the story-teller). There is also the "bad old days" narrative, which inevitably involves references to academia's old-boy network and lecherous old profs with beds in their offices.

While I have never had the misfortune to come across a bed in an office--only some suspiciously squishy sofas--I've spent quite a bit of time in the last several years feeling frustrated about the inner circles that continue to dominate academic life. At every conference I've ever been to there always seems to be a "cool group," usually comprised of the plenary speakers, the conference hosts, and a few assorted friends who eat, drink, and sit with each other and generally shun everyone else. Even at post-talk receptions in graduate school there were unofficial groupings; all the graduate students scrambled to talk to either the speaker or the hippest professors in attendance in the hopes of establishing some kind of credibility. I mostly used to sulk in a corner and nurse grapes before quietly slinking off.

While I am a very friendly and sociable person, I'm pretty wretched at schmoozing. I can never think of an intelligent comment or witty question on the spot, I'm afraid of annoying the person or seeming stupid, and I simply lack the necessary verve to approach total strangers. At the first major conference I attended I was intent on speaking to one of the plenary speakers whose book I loved and used in my conference paper. I stalked the man for two days in desperation before I figured out a way to meet him. Ten minutes before my paper started I saw him looking a book display, so I wandered over, pretended to browse, and dropped a book at his feet. I felt like an 18th-century Frenchwoman with a handkerchief, but it worked. Unfortunately, after that first meeting (and he kindly came to my paper), he didn't seem particularly interested in talking to me, and I was so afraid of being a pest that I didn't approach him again after that.

Once I actually got a job, I figured professorship would automatically propel me out of the ranks of the desperate and mute. Alas, I've now discovered new obstacles to academic hipster status: my lack of a book and a network of academics who know and love me. I was recently at a colloquium where I was the junior-most faculty member, and as I watched everyone else reminisce about conferences ten years ago, first books, and life pre-tenure, I felt utterly alone. No one knew who I was, and with only one small publication to my name I can't exactly spear-rattle. So, as the sun set over the first-night party, while all the other professors sat together on lawn chairs and caught up I grabbed several stems of grapes and found the little contingent of grad students huddled together in a corner. They were glad to see me.