The Metaphor to Nowhere

Recently I was invited to attend a national educational conference for college teachers and administrators. I was also invited to send a proposal for a presentation at the conference. I was slightly doubtful about the value of the conference when my proposal was accepted without any vetting — I wasn’t asked to supply my credentials, my background, my experience in the field, or the literature (if any) that I would be using for my presentation. As a matter of fact, I have no specific training in the subject. I have been working in an administrative position for less than a year, and it is not in the field for which I earned my degrees. In short, although I’m a pretty good speaker and I think I have gained some valuable insights from my experiences this year, I have absolutely no qualifications to make a presentation.

I was even more troubled when the conference schedule was sent to me. It offers ten sessions per hour for three days. Just for kicks, I asked the conference coordinator how many people are expected to attend. “Between 200 and 300,” she responded. You do the math: just about every attendee is a presenter! Who knows whether any of them have anything valuable or cogent to say to me? How should I choose which of the ten sessions per hour to attend?

Titles might be helpful, right? So here are some of the offerings during the first couple of hours:

A Self Sustaining Village. A Village of Volunteers. Bringing Online Students into the Village. It Takes a Village to Raise a Budget. It Takes a Village to S-T-R-E-T-C-H a Budget. Developing a Drop In Village. Let the Editorial Village Help you Decide. It Takes a Village: REACH . . . Building a Village to Market Learning Services. Our Students are a Village. And here’s a little twist: Build it and They Will Come. Stream it and They Will Come.

Sheesh!

These faceless “colleagues “of mine seem not to have a creative thought in their brains. This tired old metaphor they’ve trotted out harks back to the wife of a president from three administrations ago! It’s nearly 20 years old! And these folks are supposed to direct me into the future of education?

Sigh. What a waste of time and travel money. I’ll bet most of it is funded by Title V grants. Don’t even get me started on that.

I sent my regrets.