At the convention where I’m going, we will have an 8-hour meeting of the executive board. 8:30 to 4:30. People keep saying “corporatization” but in the corporate world nobody does this crap anymore. Nobody. Expecting people to sit on their asses all day is ridiculous. Useless. Stupid. Only in academia are we outdated enough to do this kind of an insane exercise. I’m already in a shitty mood, and I’m not even there yet.
We used to have 3-hour department meetings but I put an end to that when I became “the hiring manager of this esteemed unit”. My position is, if you can’t get it done in under an hour, you suck.
Clarissa's Blog 
They do it in the corporate world. Not regularly, but they have special brainstorming retreats, etc. with all-day meetings.
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They have activities, though. Fun speakers, yoga instructors, shamans, financial psychologists, public speaking gurus, rafting, swimming with dolphins, paragliding, meditation , jeep rides through the jungle, yacht sorties, psychics. My sister goes to these things all the time. They are fun!
And we just sit around a table all day staring at paperwork about how our discipline is “historically dominated by white heterosexual men of European and North American origin” (literal quote) and how we denounce that sad fact.
If you can’t provide psychics and dolphins, don’t make people hang around for hours, is what I’m saying.
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OK, I agree with you about the one-hour limit, but I’d really like to sign up for the psychics and dolphins.
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Honestly, I would rather sit through a boring 8-hour meeting than be subjected to psychics and shamans in particular. The rest of it sounds like torture to me as well. The best option by far is not to show up to either of those.
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Why, though?? It’s a new experience, it’s something to tell friends and laugh about. Or not laugh. Some shamans have pretty neat tricks. And psychics are great at reading people, do you can observe their methods and learn.
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Not all shamans and psychics are harmless. Many of them are frauds or just excellent at reading people, but as far as I am concerned it is best to stay as far away as possible from the occult.
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For real. Just don’t. Ditto for yoga– in the US most of them are probably just fancy exercise instructors, but there’s a definite weird end of that scene that is not healthy. I’d honestly want to get clearance from my priest before going to any such event.
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“psychics are great at reading people”
When you see some of the tricks described on paper they seem too hokey and fake and you wonder how anyone could fall for it…. but never underestimate what a skilled communicator can do in real face-to-face interactions (same goes for salesmen).
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Yes, they have those things. They also have all-day sessions without them. We did a “vision session” consisting of several days sitting in a room and looking at powerpoint slides at my last job.
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I think I’d rather go for the “waterboarding experience” one.
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