The Fire Still Burns

I just got back from the conference today, and I can honestly say it changed my life. 

When I first arrived, I was very intimidated.  I had been out of the loop for so long.  And I was surrounded by people who studied what I studied...except the vast majority were either Ph.Ds or Ph.D candidates, and I only had my Master's.   It took me a few hours to get going.

But then I got over it.  The more I talked with people, the more I realized that I wasn't as behind as I thought I was.  I could hang with these guys...and learn a lot at the same time.

I met a whole bunch of new people, and created some fresh and interesting prospects.  It was about as successful as it could have been.  My only regret is that I didn't attend more workshops/presentations. 

But what I did instead was network.  I ran into three of my old professors/instructors, and got to talk to them.  One of them is the head of my grad school department; the other was my Research Methods teacher.  I also attended an informal Baruch College social after Saturday's events.  I met several consulting firms, and finally learned about the major players in the I/O field (both corporate and non-profit/government).  Really, this couldn't have been more essential an event for me to attend.

But most importantly, I put the final seals on the negative residuals of November.  Finally, I regained the courage to be myself again.  During the past presentation I saw, I made a good comment about the role of cognitive processing power and how mental capacity must be taken into account when conducting research on multitasking. 

In other words, I got my swagger back.  And I realized that, for me, the fire still burns.

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