Facing the F2F

This fall has been busier than expected. I thought that being done with grad school would magically open up my schedule to the unknown pleasures of free-time, but this has not been so. I don't mind having long days and being booked up, but what I have been looking forward to is coming home after work and NOT having to work on anything else. No papers, emails, reading, etc., you get the idea. Four things have conspired to make this dream impossible for me so far this fall, and I have just completed the fourth of them:

• Thesis defense
• Moms (both actual and lawful) in town
• Pre-Season TA training (seven weeks between the two companies, if you can believe it)
• Face to Face

Face to Face is always a big undertaking. This is my third year- second as coordinator- and it just keeps getting bigger. More presenters. More A/V needs. More speakers. Bigger, bigger, bigger. I got to hire a staff this year. Two paid assistants in addition to my battalion of volunteers. It saved my life- I might not have made it out if they hadn't been there. Even when things go right, it is hectic. And this year it was very hectic, but everything went very right. I have been trying to reflect on this conference and still don't have much to say about it except that I am proud of myself, grateful to the people who worked as hard as I did, and kind of impressed that it all happened the way it did.

The only mishap, which was slightly funny at the time and much funnier in hindsight, was that our Grand Finale/Closing Remarks/Raffle & Celebration was booked in a room next to a memorial service and we had to celebrate in hushed tones. Ahh...the foibles of having a conference at a church (and a church with a dysfunctional facilities staff at that)...

Anyway, it's all over now, and I am apparently going to start having lots of freetime in my evenings. Already I've noticed a drop-off in the emails I've (not) been receiving and no one has been calling me about LCD projectors. I'm still catching up on all the things I've let slide in the last couple months- laundry, vet appointments, ink cartridge purchasing, socializing, blogging- and so far I haven't noticed a huge abundance of freetime. The one thing I DID do the other day, though, was watch a crappy movie on cable in the middle of a weekday and I didn't feel guilty about things I was supposed to be doing instead, so if that is a sign of all the productive and amazing things I'm going to accomplish in my post-grad-school-life, well then...well...