The Way to San Jose

Last weekend was my first time attending a professional conference, and I also gave a speech about my research on the Irish poet Yeats. It was awesome just to get out of town for a couple days, I don't think I've gone out of the valley all year! San Jose is cool, relaxing and the weather is cool and there are tons of interesting people walking around.

The conference was cool too. I was stressed out waiting to speak because there were a lot of professors there from universities in Ireland and some famous artists. Everyone had an important sounding introduction, but I was just a middle school teacher from Delano :) But, everyone was really friendly so I relaxed. They all told jokes during their speeches and didn't try to act like they were better than anyone else. They just like meeting people that share their interests and talking about it. The only bummer was that a pretty famous Irish playwright, Bisi Adigun, gave a performance at the same time as my speech so only 7 people attended! (they usually had about 18 people). I hoped everyone would hear me. It turned out ok though, because I spoke well and one Irish professor (Peter Denman) that listened gave me some good feedback that is really going to help me to continue my research. So you never know, it only takes 1 good listener to be a good audience.

I also heard some great speeches about Irish history, James Joyce, and even the youtube sensation of hand dancing (you might have seen it in a mcdonald's commercial). It has a much more complicated backstory than you might think! I went to nice dinners at 2 restaurants and hung out with Matt, Bradford, and Meghara. I even got to talk to Bisi, and he's a really nice guy so I was happy that so many people went to his performance. I'm glad I went and now I hope I can go to the big national event in New Orleans next spring (if I can come up with new research!) peace.