Today was wonderful in the
sense that I was able to attend many sessions and meet new people, but also a
bit sad because I never got to see the sun. I literally was inside the entire
time the sun was out except for a brief glimpse as I ran from the hotel to the
convention center to make it in time for free breakfast.
Me and Jennifer Jones (best friends in 4th grade, reunited at the 3M Plenary lunch) |
This session was hosted by two
Native female engineers that work at Sandia National Labs. The main focus was
on leadership and the different styles of it by splitting us into groups and
letting us work through scenarios that dealt with difficult situations. My
group was made up almost entirely of a group of women from Minnesota, and it
was slightly awkward. You could tell they already had a group dynamic, and I am
not too good at dealing with girls when it comes to close knit groups such as
this one. When working through the situations, I had to get over that and work
with the group in coming up with a solution. That wasn’t the part that interested
me though, it was the responses that each group gave and the feedback we
received from the two presenters. Their outlook on their position in the
company was inspiring and I was thankful to be able to talk with them
one-on-one after the presentation and get pictures with them. Along with this,
I was able to capture the parting words that were meant to inspire us. It
worked. (Video was too big, will upload separately)
After the session, I went
straight to the closing circle that ended up being very similar to a talking
circle with one person in the middle sharing their feelings on the conference
and AISES in general. This part made me very uncomfortable. I did not go to the
middle myself, but out of those that did a large majority of them started
crying. I am uncomfortable with emotions and it made me feel very awkward
watching these people cry in the middle of a giant circle.
After we were all done monopolizing John's time with the rest of the conference attendees, we headed over to what was supposed to be the "Traditional Activity" which turned out to be more like a rock group made up of Native American guys. Don't get me wrong, they were pretty good but when a group of Natives show up in regalia expecting a pow-wow, people just felt awkward. It was too loud and I was itchin for a round dance. They didn't switch either, so we left to go to Disney instead since it was our last night there.
Me, Kristina, Waylind, and then two of our other friends named Adam and Collin got a taxi and drove on over to what we thought was Downtown Disney which actually turned out to be Disney Boardwalk. I didn't know the difference, but the difference ended up being about 3 miles of highway, so we chased down one of the Disney shuttles and pretended like we were guests at the hotel. This pretty much set the tone of the rest of our night in Orlando, not knowing where we are (Kristina lol) and A LOT of walking.
Overall our travel back went well, except for a minor bump at the Orlando airport, and we made it back in 13 hours of travel start to finish. After not sleeping at all the night before, I fell asleep almost immediately after I made it back to my dorm and thus ends my journey across the country, in the middle of a snowstorm to the AISES 2014 National Conference.
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