Well today was the last day of the conference. It wasn't my favorite SHA ever, but it was a good experience. I think it would have been better if all of the hotels had been closer to the University of Leicester Campus. That 1.5 mile walk in the freezing cold was kind of a drag. And then all of the buildings were either frigid or so hot you were falling asleep. Maybe a hotel would have been a better venue. I feel like I would have met more people if it had been in a hotel. You tend to strike up conversations when you are all concentrated in one place. This SHA it felt like you rarely ran into another conference attendee. I think I finally have found out how to meet people in the organization though- go on a tour each year. I met two nice PhD students on my tour of the potteries. One was even a student at the University of Alabama. We chatted about how odd the South is. Good times!
Anyway, you are probably wanting to know how my paper went. I was in a morning ceramics session on the last day of the conference. There were papers on ceramics from all over the world in our session, so that was kind of cool. I was nervous when I first went up, but it helped that I had just talked to Jake a few minutes before. Thanks sweetie! It went pretty smoothly when I got into the flow of it. I even made the entire room laugh at one point. I got a good bit of applause too. Since it was one of the last sessions though, few people stuck around to talk about the papers. I only had one person comment on mine, an he clearly didn't understand the part of the paper he was commenting on. I was a little disappointed by this- I had kind of hoped someone would come up to me with a suggestion for what the food plot site's function was. No such luck. :( I think everyone was hungry and in a hurry for lunch. I'm never going to figure that site out.
The conference was a good experience though. I came out of my shell a bit (see the above photo), and met a few cool people. I learned how to better involve myself in SHA. I learned that if I want something, I am capable of achieving it. I didn't get a lot of support from Janet or Evan when I first decided to go, but instead of letting that discourage me, I let it fuel my determination to go. I'm proud of what I accomplished. It's been a great way to start 2013, and I'm eager to see what the rest of the year has in store for me.
The trowel that will eventually be in my field kit ;)
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