As I turned into my driveway just before 5:00 pm yesterday afternoon, I let out a huge sigh of relief. I pulled up to the garage, turned off car, and just sat there for about five minutes – totally exhausted.
It was a good exhaustion that had little do with the relatively quick and easy 3-hour drive from Middletown, CT – the last leg of my return to the real world. Imagine referring to AERA/NCME (or any conference experience) as the real world, but that’s a story for another day. Today is all about me.
It was exhaustion, but it wasn’t fatigue. Fatigue is an altogether different feeling.
This was the exhaustion that I used to feel driving home from Vermont after a NECAP TAC meeting or on the drive back from Providence with Brian Gong after an all-day (or two) meeting with our friends at the Rhode Island Department of Education. A satisfying combination of being physically tired, mentally drained, and yet intellectually excited.
The trip to Philadelphia was all that I hoped it would be.
First things first
I secured my apple fritter from Beiler’s Doughnuts – fifth person in line when they opened on at 8:00 on Saturday morning. With the still-warm fritter and an apple cider doughnut in hand, I returned to my hotel room to review the slides for my 11:25 presentation with Damian Betebenner.
Following the presentation, Damian and I set off in search of lunch. After passing a couple of boarded up restaurants, we turned down that street that runs along the back side of the Convention Center – the view not featured in any tourism ads. Ahead at the next intersection, we spotted a fairly nondescript (but not particularly inviting) little place named Egg’s Ale that appeared to be open. The menu board in the window featured a cheesesteak sandwich – a promising sign. Looking through the window, the place was nicer than expected. When we went inside, we saw that the restaurant actually opened into the lobby of a hotel. The sandwiches were delicious. Another valuable lesson in looking at things from more than one perspective and not being fooled by spurious context clues.
I was able to check the apple fritter and cheesesteak off my list, but having both in a five-hour span might not have been the best idea.
Enough about food. I won’t even mention my confusion over how that little Trader Joe’s Tuna Wrap I had for lunch on Sunday contained 600 calories.
Finding What I Was Looking For
I attended many more sessions in 2024 than I did in 2018 when I was NCME program co-chair – although I did skip out of the conference for a 24-hour period both times.
At the sessions, I did find myself thinking things like:
- Oh, they’re young. They’ll learn not to say things like that or figure out that line of research is a dead end or not to cite his paper.
- Wow! They’ve really taken their thinking on that issue to a new level since 2018.
- Still spewing that nonsense. I guess it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
More important were the times I found myself thinking:
- Gee, I wish I had thought of that.
- I need to write about that.
- If I take a little bit of what he said, combine it with what she said this morning, and frame the issue the way those folks did yesterday…
As in 2018 (as well as in the intervening years), there were also plenty of times where I read the session description and thought that’s really interesting, and I cannot wait to see where their work leads, but it’s too late for me to go down that road. But that’s OK.
And like any NCME conference I’ve ever attended, there were sessions where I came away thinking I don’t really understand what they’re talking about – but a smaller percentage of those sessions were technical in nature than in the past. More on that in my next post.
Up With People
They say that absence makes that heart grow fonder, so perhaps living in relative isolation these past four years explains why it seems that I’ve shifted 180° from that young graduate student attending the Minnesota-Illinois football game who responded to the brief survey stating that the thing he liked best about the free people mover shuttle bus was the bus, and the thing he liked least, the people.
In Philadelphia, the best part was connecting with old friends and colleagues – some of whom stepped away from full-time employment long before I did.
It was the people who came up to tell me they enjoyed reading my blog – including the posts they didn’t agree with. Some of those people I knew well, some I didn’t know at all, a couple I recognized from the LinkedIn photos when they react to a post.
It was putting faces to the names of people whose blog posts and papers I edited in one capacity or another over the past few years. Or three-dimensional faces to people whose images I have only seen on Zoom.
It was reconnecting with my colleagues at the Center, former Center interns, and new Center associates throughout the conference and at the Center for Assessment reception. Thanks, Scott for the invitation. (Did anyone else find it strangely fitting that the Center reception was held at a restaurant named The Wayward?)
As well as reconnecting with the cadre of “former Center associates” whose support has been so important to me and who continue to do such amazing work.
‘Twas a great reunion, befitting of a king!
Then I realized people were more important than things.
Symbols and Signs
Could it be a coincidence …
- That the very first new person I met in Philadelphia was a doctoral student from the University of Minnesota, a former teacher whose dissertation topic and interests were much more classroom-oriented than those usually found in the measurement program. Déjà vu.
- That my first meeting included three NERA past presidents and I ran into two others during the morning break.
- That the aforementioned Center reception was held in the Wanamaker Room, the same namesake as the extravagant Philadelphia tugboat that eventually became a Portsmouth NH “floating” restaurant and the symbol of the rebirth of NEERO in the late 1990s.
I cannot overstate the importance of NEERO and NERA connections in my life and in my career.
On the drive home, I spent Sunday night at the Marriot in Trumbull, CT – the site of the annual NERA conference. I smiled when the person at the desk asked if it was my first time with them. I could almost see the JMU bus in the back of the parking lot. It felt like home. Working on my proposal for October.
My trip to NCME was bookended by lunch visits with friends who also happen to be NEERO past presidents. Next week I will attend the NEERO conference in Portsmouth, NH. The John Wanamaker is long gone, but I will get to hear Mike Russell deliver a keynote address: Systemic Racism and Educational Measurement: Why the Silence? If you’re in the area…
Will I attend the NCME conference next year in Denver? We’ll see.
Until then, I’ll keep writing, posting, publishing (I hope), and picking up pinecones (no, that’s not a metaphor).
Thanks for reading.
Embrace the Absurd 