Costs Urge Me to be a Recluse

Up until 2015, I didn't really get the appeal of attending large events like conventions, conferences, and concerts. My interest started when my family helped me win concert tickets for a Mixmas Karmin concert in December 2015. After attending, I realized why people like such large events. The energy at the concert was high, but the community feeling was just right. There's something special about being in a crowd of people all feeling emotionally connected while listening to, dancing, and singing along to your favorite artists. Ever since, I've longed at attend such events at least once a year if the opportunities present themselves.

In the last year, my longing to attend such events has backfired. I truly do think the cost of all the ones I attended have been worth it with the exception of my most recent conference, but more and more events have become inaccessible in the last year. That inaccessibility makes me regret even attempting to attend some of these events. If I seem more like a recluse or pessimist in the next year, here are my reasons why.

2020 Travel

I should have learned from 2020 before getting my hopes up for 2023. I had registered and bought the plane ticket for my first ever NCTE CCCC conference. Of course, once the pandemic began, it was completely cancelled. I had paid for insurance on my flight and when I tried to get a refund the airline said the insurance didn't cover the pandemic. Then what WOULD it have covered? Stupid. I will never be buying insurance on a flight again.

Because I only got reimbursed from the college if I attended a conference, I also didn't get reimbursed for the plane ticket in 2020. They instead gave me a voucher for a future flight, which was worthless to me in a pandemic as a graduate student with no money and no more easy summer jobs. I took out a loan to care for myself that year mainly because the airline took my money without refund. This was only the beginning of my lesson in not trusting what I pay for if it is time sensitive.

Jonas Brothers

I was so excited to live out my teenage dream when The Jonas Brothers were playing live just 1 hour away from me last November. My partner and I paid about $300 for our seats. Just a couple days before the concert, it was postponed. I found out later the same day that they would instead be performing for a sporting event. A general television audience had been chosen over a concert for fans in the Midwest. I was devastated.

For about 3 months, we were not given a refund because the concert had been simply "postponed." However, according to their other concert dates, it would have taken over a year to reschedule the concert. Eventually, they decided to just cancel it and give out money back, but it was 3 months of waiting for that refund. The reschedule made me feel like I didn't matter as a Midwest fan. After the initial postponement, I didn't want to see them anymore. To this day, I no longer listen to their music and change the station if they're on the radio. They turned my teenage dream into feeling like I was worthless.

I Think You Should Leave Live

If you know anything about my sense of humor, you know my favorite show during the last few years is I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. I even named my cat Fifty-Five after their iconic Pay It Forward sketch. When tickets for the live show on my 30th birthday sold out, I was so relieved to see there would be a national tour. One affordable tour date was in Texas. I convinced my cousin to drive out to Texas from Oklahoma to rent a hotel with me and attend the show. I purchased $400 plane tickets. I was so excited, especially after the Jonas Brothers concert had been cancelled just a few months before.

Fifty-Five, named after the Pay It Forward sketch

Once again, disaster strikes. This time, there were scattered storms in the south... multiple tour dates in Texas and other southern states were cancelled, including mine. I got the refund for the show tickets, and my cousin covered the hotel room... I couldn't get a refund for my plane tickets. I ended up having to sacrifice $200 as they only gave me a partial refund and when I tried to report it to the Better Business Bureau, they said Ticketmaster was not responsible for refunding my travel costs. What a waste!

I know this show was less of anyone's fault, but I was still ripped off. What had excited me for about five months made me now feel like a fool.... and a poor fool at that. I decided to never again travel long distances for a show or concert again.

PAMLA & MMLA

My most recent regret has to do with smaller conferences. The ones I attended from 2021 to 2023 had a more accessible infrastructure as a result of pandemic concerns. I encouraged my mentee to apply for a present at these conferences. Her experience was less than ideal, and not accessible at all. First, the department limited the amount of grants for conference travel this year. She didn't get the funding she needed to attend either MMLA or PAMLA. When I offered for her to stay at my family's home during PAMLA, we thought it would be a fun adventure. It wasn't.

PAMLA advised sick participants to not come in person and she followed their directions when her fever hit 103 degrees. In an effort to advocate for her, I suggested allowing her to Zoom in, which I was told would be a difficulty for the conference wifi. I offered to have her record her paper and for me to share the video while she was on a phone call. This accessibility option was also rejected by the conference chair, saying it was against the values of PAMLA's networking focus. Lastly, I told her to ask for a refund as the registration was expensive and after her communication, she was removed from the conference program completely. She still awaits a response from the chair about a refund. For MMLA, she will also not be given a refund.

These conferences have shoved accessibility to the side now that many non-disabled and healthier people no longer care about or fear Covid-19. This is not the reality of chronically ill people with weakened immune systems and other disabilities. We still seek and need accommodations that were offered to everybody during the early years of the pandemic. The same options that helped me network and build my CV in those years are the same options that are now missing from conferences I recommended for my mentees. It's definitely embarrassing and frustrating for me.

Ironically, while advocating for my mentee at PAMLA, NCTE CCCC sent out an email offering the same accessible ways to include presenters that I suggested to the PAMLA chair for their 2025 conference. I'm glad at least one conference I suggested will be accessible in case of recurring attendance and health issues. I know we don't live in a perfect world and that some smaller conferences don't have the funding to make everything more accessible. I know these conferences need to make money by having presenters rent rooms at the hotels. I understand in-person interactions are easier for networking than simply by just using Whova. However, I find it ironic how these conferences focus on the medical humanities and disability studies and still don't show that these perspectives and areas of study in our field are valued and applied through action during the event.

I will update this blog once she hears back from PAMLA, but bets believe that if they do not offer her a refund in any sense, I will be roasting them here just like I am for MMLA. And I certainly won't be sharing the organization's events with my mentees in the future.

Recluse-ing

I've been disappointed by and ripped off by airlines, conferences, concerts, and shows so much in the last few years that this makes the hope of feeling that camaraderie at these events is no longer feeling worth it. I want to slip into the shade and stay in my warm apartment, ignoring advertisements for any of these events. Maybe if there was more consumer safety, I'd be interested in attending but my experiences have proven less than ideal at most and traumatizing at worst. It sucks, because I value experiences more than objects, but at this rate the emotional turmoil of the purchase process is not worth it to me anymore.

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