"Random?" Conversations

Ever made an appointment to talk to someone, then get there and realize you frankly have nothing to say? Well, in that case there are two options: admit your fault and leave, tail between your legs....or option B: start talking and attempt to appear relevant.

Well I had 3 appointments today all in a row that had about that same format.

First conversation was with a religious studies professor at Brown. I'd been encouraged to go "check out" the department. I'd already seen the website, knew their focus was on antiquity and basically things I'm not really interested in nor have background with.....but I went anyway. So now I'm sitting in front of this woman attempting to tell her why I came to see her. Oh dear. Well first I say I am thinking about graduate school in general, she basically tells me that this isn't for me because I don't have the kind of background they would want (aka in religious studies, of course).
So seeing this meeting falling apart before my eyes, myself trying to make a graceful exit....I decide to ask her about her own research interests--salvation! I've had this same tactic before, been in the middle of a visit/meeting/etc and realize that it is completely not relevant to anything I care about....so instead I decide to take it as a chance to get to know this person. Interesting to do when they think you're there to find out about something completely different.
---So in the end we had a very nice conversation about senses and smells in relation to religious experience. She'd written a book on it. Sounded actually very interesting to me. Conversation 1 saved.

My next meeting was with the Brown-Co-operative housing group. I just wanted to see the house and get a chance to observe what non-religious co-housing or communal living would look like. This is an odd thing to tell someone you're interested in.....yea, I wanna just wander around your house. So getting to the house, I met one girl who seemed a bit confused about why I'd come.......so suddenly I decided to tell her about my "research project" on co-ops....not exactly what I'm doing, but at least didn't leave her staring at me like I was crazy anymore.

If nothing else, this resulted in a chance to really ask some great questions and get to know a new person as well. At that point I knew i wasn't taking notes or holding any agenda of my own....so why not? ask this girl how long she'd lived there, her major, and her experience living in a co-op, her personal struggles, whatever. Interesting how coming in as an outsider/researcher can land you license to ask people personal questions like that sometimes. She told me all about the conflict going on in the house, spilling about somone who kept referring to the housing situation as Germany before WWII. Seemed a bit out of my line of questioning, but interesting nonetheless. Regardless, what first seemed like a horribly awkward conversation, trying to explain why i wanted to wander her house (really just personal interest), suddenly became a good discussion on sharing living space.---Conversation #2 saved.


So next I was expected back at the Religious Studies department for my second line of questioning/discussion with now the department head. You can understand my extreme hesitation at this point recognizing I pretty much have no business to be thinking about Brown religious studies department at all. I considered cancelling the appointment, wondering what I would come up with to talk about unless I simply choose to lie and talk about "interests" that were more alligned with theirs. I decided instead to go through with the appointment.

I'd had a few minutes in between other meetings to go to the library and search out this woman on the internet and see her interests. I also knew best at this point it would be better to come in appearing completely ignorant and talk about myself and see if she felt I fit the program (already knowing I didn't) than to state that for her myself. However cost/benefit analysis told me that it would be a waste of time to totally focus on what was not/could not be. So after a short discussion about how Brown was probably not the program for someone with my interests, we had a nice talk about sociology and what it meant to study religion from a non-theoretical/philisophical perspective and instead to take a more "grounded" approach. It was reassuring.
But I'd have to say my conversation twisting skills came best into use when I just asked for some of her scholarly opinion on the history of the Desert Fathers (the new monastic people like to invoke the name, but I know little about them). This became a beautiful tactic, we had a great discussion about memory/what it meant for people to look back on a "tradition" that probably wasn't complete reality....but in the construction of ideas, historical fact didn't matter as much as the ideal they were upholding. Hopefully that made sense......But still, conversation #3 saved.


Well at the end of the day, I ran across Providence twice, didn't really get any further in either discovering my future or researching my thesis....but I had some nice talks. I wouldn't call it a pointless day, I feel like my mind was somewhat expanded in the process.

Maybe that's what life just is sometimes, the sum of many great conversations. Or at least I often feel like that's what my life becomes.