ABS: Another Boring Seminar..... zzzzzzzzz.....

I just got back from a seminar arranged at my department, the Centre of Asian Studies. My department arranges Asia-related seminars about 3-5 times a month. In lieu of taking courses, students in my department are required to attend these seminars. This way, even the most boring and irrelevant speakers are guaranteed an audience of 6 postgraduate students. Oh, that's not necessarily true. The only way we can get out of attending these seminars is if we have a scheduling conflict. The two girls in my department have managed to miss most of these seminars because one has classes to teach during these hours while the other wisely scheduled her required Graduate School courses on Tuesdays and Thursdays - most seminars are scheduled for Thursdays. Very very smart.



I hold the dubious record of managing to fall asleep during every single seminar. It doesn't help that most seminars are held in Putonghua, a.k.a. Mandarin. You can't expect me to listen to academic language in Chinese and to ask intelligent questions and make critical comments in Chinese too. It also doesn't help that the speeches are never on topics related to my own research area. So far, I've had to go through the ordeals of "The Japanese Economic Development Model Revisited" (in Chinese), "Print Culture and Department Stores in Republican Shanghai" (in Chinese), "The Textile Industry in Shanghai in the 1930s-1940s and its Relation to Hong Kong" (in Chinese), "ICT Policies in Central Asia: Best Practice, Good Practice or Malpractice" (in English, but very boring), and "Financial Secretaries: Their Trials and Triumphs" (also in English, but somewhat less boring). Financial Secretaries? I prefer the kind of secretaries who wear skirts!

I understand that the point of requiring us to attend these seminars is to broaden our horizons, to expose us to research of different disciplines and of different geographical areas, and to learn to think critically and to formulate intelligent questions on the spot. However, I would much prefer to have regular coursework, the kind I had at UBC, even if they're courses without classrooms, i.e. they consist of a reading list/reading schedule and perhaps essay assignments. Instead, my four-year PhD program will consist of three months of required coursework (e.g. "Intro to Thesis Writing" and "Logic and Critical Thinking"), the aforementioned seminars, and my PhD thesis. Swell. At least I'm getting paid. A lot.