Conference Reflections


Before I go on to blog about my other adventures, I wanted to blog a bit about my conference experience in Durban. I know I already have an entry, saying a little bit about it, but there's so much more that I learned from that conference. Some of it is expressed in one of my blog entries on my "Be A Voice" blog which you can access here.

While sometimes I dislike conferences because it's usually daunting to go by myself (and I'm often attending conferences by myself), I am always glad I went to most of them. Well, I couldn't have been more glad to have gone to this one. Life is always interesting in that the path of least resistance isn't always the most rewarding or the most inspiring or the most educational. The conference itself was just inspiring. I was moved to remember that there was a reason I quit my job as a school psychologist to move on to Social Welfare - something I wouldn't have discovered if it weren't for my friend Cha who listened to me talk about what I want to do and then made the recommendation for me to take a look at that area. So credit to her for picking that out of my ramblings. This conference reminded me that no matter how discouraged I got and will get, I am in this for a reason. I believed in these issues of social justice, social action, and social change. And by golly I was going to live it as best as I could without getting bogged down too much with the routines of life. Of course I have to balance it with the practicality of it all, especially as a full time student. But the conference fanned the fire that was stoked when I first began my Ph.D. studies a year ago. And although it's taking me a while to adjust to life back in the States after being away for 6 weeks, I know where I should be headed in the next few years. And I can't wait to see if I can go to the 2010 conference in Hong Kong!

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