If AMS was only more like Gossip Girl

1. Two senior scholars are necking surreptitiously in a dark corner of the Berkeley party. You snap a picture with your cell phone and send it to AMS-l for community ridicule.

2. You spot an Ivy Leaguer wearing a Brooks Brother suit. You scoff and mutter to your friends that BB hasn't made a real sack-style suit since the 1970s.

3. A rival grad student gives a paper that steals your dissertation topic. You rise during the question-and-answer period, and graciously thank them for their thought-provoking work. "Thank you for your paper, I found it very enlightening. I particularly admire that you were able to accomplish such excellent scholarship during what I know was an intense struggle with drug addiction, and I wish you well on the job market."

4. JAMS has recently given your article a revise-and-resubmit. You buttonhole Kate Van Orden in the hallway, who tells you that your work doesn't feel authentic, and suggests that until you've woken up in an East Village gutter in a pool of Richard Taruskin's blood, you'll never be a real musicologist.


Any others?