Life as an Extreme Sport

Politicians

Academics, Bioethics, Politics

And speaking of politicians, I spent a good chunk of my morning actually interacting with local politicians, including (ever so briefly) the senior senator from New York. But the vast majority was spent talking to local legislators, and it was an interesting experience. I’ve never before had someone look at me like they just wanted to devour my brain, and thought that if they did so, they’d know everything I do.

The initial conversation was struck over my textbook, but when they found out I study bioethics, their ears literally perked up – a complete change in body language, and I found myself fielding questions about stem cell research and policies, cloning, the differences between different kinds of stem cells, the problem with putting faith in amniotic fluid stem cells, and on. We even discussed the problems with promoting universal health care for a while.

After a bit, one of the gentlemen, who turned out to be another’s campaign manager, asked me if I’d thought I’d be going to a job interview when I got out of bed this morning. I asked him why he thought that I was interviewing for anything, and he told me it was because they were starting their groundwork for a presidential run in either 2012 or 2016 (which sent us off on an interesting historical deviation on beating incumbents), and they needed a savvy bioethicist on staff , and they thought I was perfect for the job. Ballsy, well-spoken, and able to explain complicated and controversial subjects in a manner that made sense and seemed to remove some of the controversy.

Flattery will always get you everywhere.

It was an interesting experience, and highlighted to me, not just the need to invest in business cards, but that I should definitely focus more on educating myself about politics in general. I have no intention of being “just” an academic, off in an institution teaching undergraduates basic ethical theory, and have every intent of actively peddling my trade (as it were) in the public sphere. And in my case, this does likely mean an involvement in politics. It seems that, much like the more you know about journalism the easier it ought to be to deal with the media, the more one knows about politics the easier it ought to be to work with politicians. Let’s see if that theory is correct, eh?

Cards

Academics

It occurs to me that if I’m going to keep meeting politicians (and others) who want my business card, I should probably have a business card. The question, of course, is what to put on the cards. I’ve never had academic business cards before. Obviously I’m a doctoral student, so I’d list that and the institute, but I can’t really say philosophy and bioethics, since I’m not a bioethics doctoral student anywhere, and especially not at a place that doesn’t even have a bioethics program. But that’s the thing people tend to want to talk to me about (see: meeting politicians), and er…

…it occurs to me that there are people in my life I could just ask about this.

I just really didn’t see a high demand for me needing business cards; that, combined with the literal headache figuring out what to put on said cards gives me largely explains why I’ve not thought about it much til now. But it’s gotten to the point where I think I’m starting to shoot myself in the foot, connections and networking wise, so it’s probably time to make it happen.