1. Rules of etiquette and their importance (continuation)

1. Taboo or not taboo? Work with a partner. Imagine you meet some people at a conference for the first time. Which of the following topics are

interesting?

safe?

conversation killers?

a bit risky?

taboo?

Family; the news; your country; religion; clothes; your health; politics; sex; sport; the weather; food and drinks; people you both know; how work’s going; the city you are in; the hotel you are staying at; your holiday plans

Give your grounds for your opinion.

2. Social and business etiquette can be tricky, and making the right moves can make a big difference. If you behave incorrectly or impolitely you will be considered as a very undesirable person to deal with. Take this quiz and see how you can tackle with the following situations.

1. You are hosting a dinner party at a restaurant. Included are two other couples, and your most valuable client and his wife. You instruct the waiter to:

1. serve your spouse first;

2. serve your client’s wife first;

3. serve you and your spouse first.

2. You are invited to a reception and the invitation states “7:00 to 9:00 PM”. You should arrive:

1. at 7:00 PM

2. anytime between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM;

3. between 7:00 PM and 7:30 PM;

4. go early and leave early.

3. You are greeting or saying good-bye to someone. When is the proper time to shake their hand?

1. when you are introduced;

2. at their home;

3. at their office;

4. on the street;

5. when you say good-bye.

4. You are talking with a group of four people. Do you make eye-contact with:

1. just the person to whom you are speaking at the moment?

2. each of the four, moving your eye-contact from one to another?

3. no one particular (not looking directly into anyone’s eyes)?

5. The waiter is coming towards you to serve wine. You don’t want any. You turn your glass upside down. Are you correct?

6. When you greet a visitor in your office, do you:

1. say nothing and let him sit where he wishes?

2. tell him where to sit?

3. say “Just sit anywhere”

7. You are invited to dinner in a private home. When do you take your napkin from the table and place it on your lap?

1. open it immediately;

2. wait for the host to take his napkin before taking yours?

3. wait for the oldest person at the table to take his?

4. wait for the acknowledged head of the table to take hers before taking yours?

8. You are scheduled to meet someone for lunch and you arrive a few minutes early to find a suitable table. 30 minutes later your associate still hasn’t arrived. Do you:

1. order your lunch and eat?

2. continue waiting and fuming that your associate is not there?

3. tell the head waiter you are not staying and give him a card with instructions to present it to your associate to prove you were there?

4. after 15 minutes call your associate?

9. You have forgotten a lunch with your associate. You feel terrible and know he’s furious. Do you:

1. write a letter of apology?

2. send flowers?

3. Keep quiet and hope he forgets about it?

4. Call and set up another appointment?

How successful are you after completing the quiz? Do you think you are quite knowledgeable in etiquette? Why? Why not?

3. You are going to read the letter, which represents a subjective opinion of a postgraduate student about the academic conference. Work in pairs and comment upon it. Explain the student’s attitude to such conferences.

Attending an academic conference is like being a teenager again. This is why they can be so awful. You hang around trying to attach yourself to a group preferably the cool kids, but in the end any group will do and then these groups hang around waiting for something to happen.

Now the conferences I have attended have been mostly small ones. There are two or three groups. If there are two, they are faculty and graduate students, with some junior faculty (i.e. got an academic position within the past 2 years) going with the graduate students. If there are three, there’s faculty, junior faculty, and graduate students. I’ve been lucky, mostly — one conference was huge but I went with a friend (just to listen), one was small and at Canada U while I was an undergrad there (also just to listen and go to the party). The ones I have been to since were somewhat different.

The first one I presented at, I was the ‘last talk’. This is bad. As my advisor warned me, no one except your friends will talk to you until after your talk. And they pretty much didn’t, except for some graduate students who were at the University of Canada. But I spent the weekend being sick about my talk, and it was a dull place for a conference, so that was okay. And after the talk, I had one person first think I had just been finishing up my dissertation, then think he had offended me because I was really a faculty member, and then babble about how he could tell the difference between PhD student talks and MA student talks and mine was definitely PhD calibre how could I only be an undergrad. Some of this was bullshit, of course, but I was pleased. Then he insulted the city Dullness is in — indeed, the whole state — which my coauthor thought sort of rude, but after a year living there I understand.

The next one I presented at was the same conference, a year later. That worked out much better, because I was the second talk, and it was in a vacation destination. So nice. So wonderful. It was the only bright spot in this past year, and absolutely the reason I didn’t quit. It also helped that the crash space I was at had 3 people crashing. Sigh. I can’t express how happy I was for those 5 days, or how unhappy I was for months previous.

The last one I presented at — it was entirely factional. You spoke to only the people from your school (no one from Dullness was there, but a few people from Canada U were, most of whom left early). The talks weren’t brilliant, either (including mine) — I went there because it was a city I’d always wanted to see, and because if I ever want to work in Canada, it helps to go to Canadian conferences. But I was staying with “family” (4th cousins, his mother and my grandmother grew up together). And I had a wonderful time with them.

Which brings me, yet again, to no point.

Except maybe: conferences can be fun, if you know people to start your schmoozing with, and especially if they’re less shy than you are. But don’t expect all that much, like for every conference to be as wonderful as that one conference where everything went right.

Nope. No real point. Oh well.

I know, I’m super original.

4. Writing. Make a report about an imaginary (or real) conference, which you have just attended. Describe all the details (in not less than 600 words) paying attention to the matters of the etiquette.