By the Banks of the Olentangy

We made a whirlwind trip to Columbus this weekend. My graduate department was celebrating its 100th anniversary, along with the official dedication of their shiny new building. (And it is indeed shiny, all metal and glass.)

One of the more amusing parts of the event happened after the first speaker gave a talk entitled, "Is Psychology Still Relevant?" The Dean of the College happened to be in the audience, and when he stood up to give his presentation, he started out by saying that he was relieved that the answer to that question was yes, after the university had spent all that money on a new building. (Rule number one: know your audience. For those of you that are not familiar with the academic hierarchy, the deans control a good part of the budget, so having the support of a dean is essential in getting resources like new buildings.)

The speaker, by the way, was a Big Cheese in one of our main professional organizations, and it seems to me that he would be much better served by a talk title that didn't sound so down in the mouth.

It was a lot of fun catching up with friends from grad school (although some of us wished the reunion part had been fewer speeches and more mingling! Oh well!) People from my "era" (that is, who overlapped with me in grad school) seemed to be particularly well-represented at the event. Yay us!

Part of the program was honoring the four faculty who essentially founded our sub-area at the university. One of them said in his remarks that they "didn't want our students to ever feel like they were doing their best, because we knew they could always do better." That pretty much sums up the atmosphere in that program -- no one ever felt good enough. I have very mixed feeling about that, because on the one hand, the program is one of the best in the country and has been for a long time, and they've turned out top-notch scientists. But on the other hand, I think they've inflicted damage in the process. A sobering thought from an otherwise festive event.