Conference coping strategies, day 1.

When you enter the Convention Center, and find your little lanyard for the name badge you have brought with you from home, because they mailed it to you, and insert the badge into the lanyard, and put it around your neck so that you are named and institutioned for all the Convention goers to see,

if you turn and see the people milling, the people who seem to have  a purpose and a reason to be there, and you say to yourself, well, how did I get here?

then you should follow these rules:

• It's okay if you just want to sit near the back and if you just want to listen and not ask questions. It's okay if the tap tap tap of your iPad keyboard is rather constant. One reason you're there: to get ideas. It's just fine if that's what you do.
• Does the hobnobbing and social buffeting put you right off? That's all right. There is no hobnob requirement. Steer clear.
• Go ahead, take the ten minutes and eat your breakfast outside. So what if you're ten minutes late. Eat already.
• Do you need to go lie down to gather your wits? Lie down. Gather them. Put that little Do Not Disturb sign on the door.
• Do you feel like you might be a hermit? Or that you might be getting in touch with your inner hermit? No problem. Order in and opt out. 

The people, I went to four really interesting sessions today, and my presentation is 90% in order, and I also ate in and worked out. Me and the conference have reached an agreement and I am ready--well 90% ready--for tomorrow.

Then I was back in it.

The War was on.

Well, not a war, exactly. The closing movement of the semester. We have just concluded the Andante movement, and now we stand, just before the Presto con Fuoco movement begins. The pianist's hands are about the hit the keys. The rubber is about to hit the road.

What I'm trying to say is that I will be consulting with students for the next week and a half.

Here's where I'm going to go ahead and say that when half your students tell you they can't use the Scheduler tool in Canvas (I use the word "tool" with care) to set their consultation appointments, it's frustrating. Sure, frustrating to them too, sure. But to me. It's frustrating to me. I'm frustrated, is what I'm saying, because the kids can't use the tool. Or half of them can't. It's a quandary. It's a dilemma. It's a big fat quandary and a dilemma and a pain in the ass. Sure, a pain in their asses too, sure. But mine. My ass is pained.

This is leaving out the downloading of their million and one files. You know, the files containing the assignments that I gave them.

The good thing is: when the consultations are done, I will have talked with all the students, and their stuff will be read and graded, by me--I'll have read and graded their stuff, personally!--and things will be much much better. So much better that the semester can just slide on down the greased chute that leads from tomorrow to the end, putting on some speed and getting a little dangerous on the turns, but it will be okay. Because I will have talked with all the students, the reading and grading will be done, or done-ish. And that, my friends--THAT, the people--that smells like the end, or as we like to call it at the community college, "summer."

Stuff I plan to do while at AWP.

Tomorrow, I am going to get on an airplane and jet away from everything. Well, I am going to indulge myself in the fantasy of that, whilst on an airplane which wends toward Boston.

Here are some other things on my agenda that are hopefully less delusional:

{\/ below, the column of my literary lights \/:}

Mr. Delillo.

1. Eat something delicious every day. Hopefully more than one thing.
2. See some friends.
3. Hide away when I need to.
4. Listen to Don Delillo talk.
5. Listen to Jeanette Winterson and Alison Bechdel talk to each other.
6. Pick up an idea or so while attending sessions.

7. Write a response to an RFP? It needs to happen for reals.

Alison Bechdel!

8. GRADE? help me!
9. Be quiet somewhere?
10. Fondle the goods at the book fair.
11. Wear the outfits I have packed, which are, at the moment, cute, nestled in my bag. I hope they stay cute in transit. Sometimes stuff you've packed loses its cuteness while in transit by a factor of ten. I don't even know what that actually means, but it is nonetheless true, I fear.

Jeannette Winterson!

This is probably enough things to do. I am going to have a good time, partly because I always do and partly because I travel with the Dr. That's right: Dr. Write. She is the mistress of all revelries and also a planner extraordinaire.

But I hope I don't get sick from lack of sleep before I even get out of town.

Dear Denver,

Tomorrow evening, I will be with you. There's a three-day workshop on Race Street that I'll be attending, one for which I have just haphazardly and frantically packed.

I'll be going to work tomorrow, for my Writing Center tutorials and a fat meeting and then appointments with my grammar and style students. So my bag has to be packed now, which makes me feel haphazard and frantic. I need to do something about that, Denver. Maybe you'll give me some perspective.

I hope so. I'm hoping to learn some things and observe many things and learn some more things. I'm hoping to rest and be quiet. I'm hoping to eat some good meals alone, and I'm hoping to calm down.

In the meantime, tonight I scanned these, which may or may not be a part of the project of the workshop. I had to cry a little while I looked for these photos. And then I had to cry a little when I looked through them. But the crying's over, at least for now.

Denver, don't let me down.

I'm kind of counting on you,

htms

T minus twelve hours.

The presentation is now 90% made.

My notes are super elaborate--in my head.

I am about 85% sure that the internet will work.

the starting point of our prezi. yes: prezi.
we're snazzy like that.

My co-presenter and I estimate that there will be five or fewer people in the audience, and at this point, that's okay with us.

I have watched a little bit of barely diverting crap on television, and turned it off and turned it on again.

It's eleven nineteen.

I have three more tenure reviews to write.



I'm getting up tomorrow at, say, six. A.M.

I have my outfit picked out and I have 80% confidence in it.

I think I'm ready.

(SLC: I am ready to see you.)