At 5:30 we had the senior dinner. I was assigned to Prof Hoffmann (every professor gets a minder so they always have someone to talk to… yeah it's bizarre), the only professor in the department who doesn't intimidate me, and we chatted on and off at the reception beforehand, mostly about Lawrence since she went here as an undergraduate.
I like Prof. Hoffmann, but she's hard to read. You can usually tell when Prof. Spurgin is patronizing you (yeah… uh huh… uh huh… yes…) and the older guard don't really play that game — Prof. Goldgar especially can't disguise his contempt for ignorance. Hoffmann is an exception, not cynical, apparently genuinely interested in what's being said. She laughs all the time.
And there's the dilemma. I have a hard time believing that someone can be both clever and "nice" — like B-town's own Meghan Rahn, intelligent nice people tend to be guileless and gullible — so maybe she's just really good at faking one of the two.
In any case, I decided to assume that she wasn't patronizing me and had a pretty good time. My side of the table at dinner was all English geeks so we tended to be on the same page when it came to the speeches. Even the keynote address was disappointing.
And the ghost of senior dinners past appeared in the form of the wine restriction. Apparently someone puked on Prof. Podair two years ago so everyone only got one glass of free wine.
Ah, but afterwards. After a perfunctory pre-party in Hiett many of us went to the VR for the afterparty. Hoffmann was there, and with Representative Man we ended up talking about literature, critical theory, and some of the professors Lawrence didn't hire during the last search. She was easily the most cynical I'd ever seen her; perhaps this is the dark side that only comes out when she's talking to Main Hall's resident curmudgeon.
In the spirit of Graham, who's always putting up pictures of professors on his blog, here's the three of us moments before Representative Man literally attacked me for favoring Foucault over Derrida:
Needless to say, it was a lot of fun. Though I kept waiting for Goldgar to show up for a quick mint julep. There would have been no topping that, ever.
Yes, yes, there was drinking. The night after senior dinner is traditionally a wild night, and the VR was packed with seniors. I had four Long Island iced teas over the course of a few hours, and it didn't help (though it was mighty nice) that Jubb treated me to two of them, extra-strong. Jubb bought a lot of drinks for a lot of people that night, here he is in the act:
By 11:30 I was drunk, but not falling over drunk, and I was having a lot of fun talking to various people at random. I also took some of the best pictures I've taken all term.
Soon enough, it was that time again.
