Bingo! You Pretentious Ass...
While I don't know the identities of the people from Chile, China or Australia who apparently read my blog, I have strong beliefs most of the people who read this have either been in or are still suffering through academia. Therefore, I feel this entry, more than any other entry I've yet written, is a great boon to my audience.
*We've* all sat through seminars given by academics which seem to have no content whatsoever. That's right--they're light seminars, content-free or reduced-content at best--and similar to diet foods, these seminars have little taste. But the packaging--whoa, the packaging--is quite colorful. Call it "painting the pig" if you will, but these speeches (and lamentably, many published papers) are dripping with the buzz words of the day. That's why your university invited them to speak; that's why the editor over at Le Journal Academique accepted their paper. And now, you're stuck suffering through a soliloquy on *blah* with only a few stale cookies and some lukewarm coffee to comfort you.
But wait, dear friends! You can take charge of this situation! Read on for your redemption.
My friend took last night's dinner as an opportunity to share with me a game he's invented called academic bingo. And now, friends, I share it with you.
We all know the buzzwords for our discipline. And we also know that these are often times used as the paint on our little pig--the verbal condiments to hide the taste.
1) Draw a 5x5 grid onto a sturdy piece of paperboard.
2) Leaving the center space blank, write the buzzwords into the squares
(Examples from my friend's bingo board: capitalism, patriarchy, feminist, diaspora)
3) You can get creative with your bingo markers, but I suggest something with a rubber backing so they don't fall off mid-seminar.
4) Every time you hear one of the buzzwords, you get to place a marker on that square. Just because you hear 5 of these words does not give you a bingo...you have to get five in a row to really win.
Now, my friend, as an undergrad, actually called out bingo to the speaker before asking a question/making a comment. When they asked what he meant by bingo, he would explain his game, and tell them which words gave him the win.
I imagine getting your pals to join in might make it a bit more exciting. "oh, you arranged contagion effect next to consolidation networks! that was clever!!"
I'd love to hear the buzzwords from other disciplines; you never know when I'll have to attend a reduced-content seminar in another field...
*We've* all sat through seminars given by academics which seem to have no content whatsoever. That's right--they're light seminars, content-free or reduced-content at best--and similar to diet foods, these seminars have little taste. But the packaging--whoa, the packaging--is quite colorful. Call it "painting the pig" if you will, but these speeches (and lamentably, many published papers) are dripping with the buzz words of the day. That's why your university invited them to speak; that's why the editor over at Le Journal Academique accepted their paper. And now, you're stuck suffering through a soliloquy on *blah* with only a few stale cookies and some lukewarm coffee to comfort you.
But wait, dear friends! You can take charge of this situation! Read on for your redemption.
My friend took last night's dinner as an opportunity to share with me a game he's invented called academic bingo. And now, friends, I share it with you.
We all know the buzzwords for our discipline. And we also know that these are often times used as the paint on our little pig--the verbal condiments to hide the taste.
1) Draw a 5x5 grid onto a sturdy piece of paperboard.
2) Leaving the center space blank, write the buzzwords into the squares
(Examples from my friend's bingo board: capitalism, patriarchy, feminist, diaspora)
3) You can get creative with your bingo markers, but I suggest something with a rubber backing so they don't fall off mid-seminar.
4) Every time you hear one of the buzzwords, you get to place a marker on that square. Just because you hear 5 of these words does not give you a bingo...you have to get five in a row to really win.
Now, my friend, as an undergrad, actually called out bingo to the speaker before asking a question/making a comment. When they asked what he meant by bingo, he would explain his game, and tell them which words gave him the win.
I imagine getting your pals to join in might make it a bit more exciting. "oh, you arranged contagion effect next to consolidation networks! that was clever!!"
I'd love to hear the buzzwords from other disciplines; you never know when I'll have to attend a reduced-content seminar in another field...
posted by slickaphonic at 6:24 PM
2 Comments:
bio-psychosocial evaluation....gah!
excellent.
(I have to admit, I got the email telling me your comment, but not to which post it was attached/directed--I was trying to figure out how in the hell that related to my post on immigration reform...=)
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