I'm Back!

Well, I've returned from my weekend in the Cities and am back to blogging. I thought about doing one from the hotel last night, but unfortunately the darn public internet shut off at 9:30 pm, so no such luck. Each day was it's own adventure.

Friday:
Left Bemidji nearly on time! I have been so impressed with our punctuality this year. Had about an hour worth of meetings, before the Penny Fellowship Dinner was to start. Having been to the dinner 2 years in a row, I elected early on to forgo it this year. Was later told I didn't miss much. Former Exec Dir showed up, which I guess was rather awkward.

Instead, I had a wonderful dinner with Brent at Friday's. Good food, good times. It'd been several months since I or anyone else in the group had seen him, so it was nice to be able to get together. He has had a rough couple of months, but seems to be happy now. After dinner, we met everyone else, plus Melissa J, another fabulous former Senator, at my house. Mom had been nice enough to bake us cake and cookies--Yum!!...Actually, I'd wanted to get there before the others, after all it was my house, but the schedule we were going by was wrong. So, Julie called my cell, and left a message like "Hey we're at your house, where the heck are you?" It was pretty funny :) It was nice to see everybody together again and having fun.

Saturday:
The day was incredibly long...14 hours. Mostly it was pretty good. Lots of meetings and seminars which were very interesting and informative. One delegation walked out of a seminar because they were supposedly offended by the way a presenter used a certain word (Hispanic). Most of us found this quite rude...the presenter was an Assoc. Vice Chancellor who himself is a member of that ethnic group.

Saturday night was supposedly Delegates Preview. That was kind of a mess. There were 3 different versions of the Articles of Operation floating around, and people were extremely confused. Thankfully, the Board realized they were going to need to do something differently, and let the rest of us go at 10:15.

Lesson Learned: Never forget to shut off your cell phone during meetings. Or, at least change it to vibrate. Jena (sister) called during Student Services committee. It was funny, especially since we'd all reset each others ringtones on Friday and mine is now a lot more obvious than before.

Sunday:
Delegates ended up not dealing with the Articles. Thank God, it would have taken forever. We passed the budget which took half an hour...quickest Assembly ever. But a new committee to discuss Articles awaits us in December and January, before the regular Spring DA in March, so it's nowhere near over. The Board meeting got bickery...an hour spent on the wording controversy, another on the non-appointment of a PR Coordinator. We were all really frustrated, especially Julie. We talked on the way home...Sasina said she'd never heard me swear so much before. That tends to happen when I'm frustrated by a conference.

Overall, even with ups and downs, it was a decent weekend. Most of the people who were first time conference attendees have told me they want to go again in December, so they must have seen a lot of positive things. That makes me feel really good...reminds me why I keep doing these things, and that I did the right thing taking the Campus Rep position.

Here's looking forward to December.