my first symposium

Well I'm up in DC this week (what week these days am I NOT up in DC??? that is the question) for the Head Start research conference. All my ladies caravaned up with me in the plastic pinto, we arrived, settled in to my amazing B&B, and started conferencing it up today. To my horror, I got an email from my discussant on Saturday that he fall off a wall (what is he, humpy dumpy?) and couldn't travel. Great. So that means I'm the chair, a presenter, and now an impromptu discussant. Oh crap.

But I built a quick bridge, put on my "I know what I'm talking about, I'm s-m-r-t, I can do this" face, and continued. This AM I got up, avoided the happy-go-lucky B&B owners who want all the residents to be friends, and suited up to dazzle all those preschool teachers. The presentation went well and apparently everyone from UVA was scheduled to present at 10 this morning.

We had over 100 people in our syposium, ran out of handouts, and had about 4 pages of extra email addresses to follow-up with. I talked for 30 minutes, my colleague had 3o minutes and we had a wonderful discussion where I could actually answer the questions. It was pretty damn exciting. I had people stop me throughout the day to say "you are a really good speaker" or ask more about the presentation or colleagues saying they heard our symposium was good from other people.

Well how about that??? Apparently I'm turning into an early childhood researcher....all that hard work actually working out. Who know?

I'm still coming down from the presentation, but I think it went well.....