Sunday, February 6, 2011

February 7 - I'm Not All That

Doug Pete and Anita Brooks-Kirkland have already begun the reflection process on their blogs. For some reason, I'm having problems cutting and pasting my Word file reflections on my blog, so I'll mention something I left out of my original reflections.

I've been accused in the past of being thin-skinned or overly sensitive, but I guess the reason I noticed and was affected by this was because it happened twice. When I walked into a conference room, the presenter saw me and sighed and uttered something like "oh no, you're not attending MY session, are you?" The speakers felt like they had nothing to offer me in their talks. This made me sad, because even though it was meant to be a compliment, I felt it segregated us into false categories of "regular Joes" and "superstars". I'm glad people feel that I have a lot to offer and do cool things, but if I believed that I was "above" learning from my peers, I would stop learning all together. If I felt that I couldn't associate with international superstars like Joyce Valenza or Gwyneth Jones or David Loertscher because I was beneath them, neither one of us would continue to grow. As it turns out, I did learn a lot from all the presentations I attended.

I'll get working on sharing my Supercon reflections tonight. Stay tuned.

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