The annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association is always in the spring around this time of year. I decided to write an account of my yearly adventures there. It is usually quite an interesting time.
Chicago 2007
I was eating
French fries at a little diner in Provo, Utah with my supervisor from BYU where
I was an adjunct instructor when she invited me to come to AERA in Chicago with
her. She wanted me to come and meet other scholars to see if I wanted to go
back to school to get my master’s degree. I went to the conference and
presented at a pre-conference session about some work I had done with my junior
high students. The people that I met there were very kind. I got invited to a
party at the house of a professor in Chicago where I got to meet a lot of
people from all over the work. I also went out to dinner at a Spanish
restaurant with another group of people and had tapas for the first time. During
the week, I walked through the downtown area and recalled fondly the last time
I had been there as a fresh-out-of-high-school 18-year old competing at the
Future Business Leaders of America business law competition.
While I was in
Chicago for AERA, however, the terrible cold I arrived with became worse.
Several days after I returned my lungs felt heavy and I had to hold my back to
breathe. I had walking pneumonia that I was not able to recover from until
July. I also bought a snow globe of the Chicago skyline that I packed in my
carry on bag instead of my suitcase so it would not get broken. Airport
security took it away from me and shattered it while I looked on in horror. I
was very sad. I had mostly resolved that I was not going to get back to AERA
for some time, but then I found out that the next venue was a place I had
always wanted to go: New York.
New York 2008
I went in a
proposal of my own for AERA, but it was not accepted. I was bummed out because
I had really wanted to go to New York. I told my supervisor at BYU the news and
she said that I would be missed. After I got off the phone with her, another
professor called me to relay the news that a group proposal with her name, my
name, and the name of friend had been accepted and we would all be going to New
York to present the paper. She also told me that we had been invited to
Teacher’s College in at Columbia University to make a presentation. I was so
excited. I took a red eye flight to New York by myself and landed at 6 a.m.
Eastern time. It was 4 a.m. in Mountain Time. I could not get into my hotel
room because the other person who was supposed to present with the professor
and I had the reservation in her name and she missed her flight. I was able to
store my suitcase at the hotel, and then I wandered hungry tired through the
streets of New York. I went to the Natural History Museum (I did not see Ben
Stiller or Attila the Hun). I walked through Central Park. When I could not
take it anymore, I went to a large Barnes and Noble, found a remote corner, and
slumped down against a bookcase to sleep.
When I woke up,
I walked back to the hotel where my roommate had arranged for me to get into
the room. I took a shower, ordered food, and then fell back asleep. My roommate
eventually arrived and we planned our presentation for Teacher’s College. The
next day when we went, the cab driver did not know where to take up so he let
us out early and we walked around Colombia not knowing where to go for some
time. We were eventually able to find the right place and the presentation went
well. For the presentation at AERA the professor had gone back to Utah already
and she forgot to give our paper to the person in charge of the session and
neither of us had a copy. So we went to our session and did the best we could,
given that we had not worked on the entire project. When we finished, we went
to Lindy’s, which was featured in the move Guys
and Dolls and had a big piece of cheesecake. The next day we went to the
Guggenheim and we got invited to a party in a condo above Central Park. I was
very excited to find that I knew some people there already. My roommate and I
also went to the Statue of Liberty, the New York Stock Exchange, and Ground
Zero. I did not buy a snow globe. The last night I was there I received my
email acceptance to my master’s program.
In the confusion
surrounding my arrival, I forgot to make arrangements for a shuttle back to the
airport. The hotel staff told me that I could try to stand outside where the
shuttles come and see if one happened to have room. So I took my suitcase and
stood outside. When the shuttle pulled up the driver got out and I told him my
situation and showed him my ticket and he opened the shuttle van door and
screamed at everyone to move over and make room for me. Then he drove like a
mad man through the side streets of Queens until we arrived at JFK. I looked up
at the board and I saw that I was going to make my flight. I gave him a huge
tip and had a very pleasant journey home.
San Diego 2009
I submitted two
proposals this year as a sole author and they were both accepted. I was able to
talk Brian into coming with me this year. We booked at a room at a pensione
instead of a large hotel and we had a very pleasant flight to San Diego. We
rented a car and drove around a bit. We went to the beach and the Body exhibit
where they show the cadavers without skin. We also crossed over the bridge to
the Presidio. We had been to the zoo our first year of marriage with Brian’s
uncle who had come to visit his in-laws. Brian’s brother gave us tickets to the
Padres season opener against the San Francisco Giants. We loved the game. Brian
was a good watcher. I read a book and he nudged me to look up for the
interesting parts. I also had the best fish I have ever eaten at a restaurant
just under the pensione where we stayed. It was a very pleasant trip.
Denver 2010
I was slated to
make one presentation and serve as a session chair this year. I thought Denver
would be an easy trip, but it was not. We were caught in a traffic jam on the
way to the airport. Brian dropped me off at the front door of the airport
without bags while he parked the car and rode the shuttle in. I got slid right
through security and found the gate. I told the airline employees that he was
in the airport and he was coming, but they had already sold his seat so I got
on the plane without him (since I had to present at 8 a.m. the next morning and
the airline was not sure they would be able to get us on another flight that
night). He was able to get a seat on the very last plane out of Salt Lake City
and he joined me in Denver at the hotel at 4 a.m. I took at shuttle to the hotel
from the airport and Brian rented a car. My presentation went well and I was
able to go to other sessions, but we were also able meet up with Brian’s best
friend from high school and his family. We spent one afternoon walking along
the Platte River and then we went to out to a very good steak dinner. We were
also able to go to several other socials for different groups. On the way back
from Denver our flight was cancelled and as consolation, we got a food voucher
for the airport. We did not know enough about how to get another flight so we
waited in the airport for 6 hours. Eventually the airline took pity on us and
they put us on what was supposed to be a dead head flight (airline crew and no
passengers) to Salt Lake City. The flight that we waited more than seven hours
for took just 52 minutes.Those planes can really go fast when they are not loaded down with people, it seems.
New Orleans 2011
I had finished
my master’s degree, but Brian had just started his. The program that he was in
did not support the students in going to AERA like mine did. Thus, when I went
to AERA this year I went without Brian. Nevertheless, I was not alone. I was 16
weeks pregnant with Hannah. Still nauseated and incredibly tired I went and
made a presentation and chaired a session. While I was there, I met the
department chair in curriculum and instruction from a university that I was
hoping to attend and she invited Brian and I to come. I was careful not to
reveal that I was pregnant. While I was there, I also took a cab ride out to
the city of Metairie where my old friend from high school was living with his
wife and daughter. As soon as I hugged him, he ascertained correctly that I was
expecting and as a result, he and his wife took fastidious care of me while I
was there. They took me on a grand four-star tour of the area in their SUV and
made me an excellent meal that included the homemade bread that I remembered
him making from our adolescence. They all drove me back to my hotel where I
took a long pregnant lady nap. I also
ate a lot of frozen yogurt to compensate for the humidity. The flight to New
Orleans took off and landed on time. The flight back was about 40 minutes
delayed by a robbery. Someone had stolen the doctor’s bag of a physician that
was supposed to be on our flight. He was coming to Salt Lake City to use a
special instrument in his bag on a patient. I thought it was so despicable that
someone would steal that.
Vancouver 2012
I defended my
master’s thesis in January 2010. By January 2011 I had rewritten it as a book
that was published in August of that year. Hannah was born in October. The book
won an award that was going to be presented to me at AERA in 2012. Brian was
finished with his master’s work and was slated to graduate in April. That
spring, all three of us flew to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. We got
Hannah a passport just for the trip. Her cute little baby face is only about 8
weeks old in her picture. I think it is good that she had to get a passport.
You never know when there is going to be a hit by a little baby terrorist. With
a six month old and the fact that I was still feeding her my milk, we were not
able to do anything but go to conference sessions and sleep at the hotel.
Hannah slept during the flight. We were worried about customs, and just as we
landed so did a jumbo jet from Beijing with hundreds of Chinese people who
needed access to the shockingly few Chinese speakers at customs. An airline
employee saw us with a baby and shuttled us to the front of the line, which
saved us about four hours standing in line. Flying back was also pretty easy.
Besides speaking
at the meeting where I accepted my award, I also made a presentation based on a
follow up to my master’s thesis work. Brian brought Hannah and tried to sit in
the back with her, but she was fussy. A woman from the University of Kansas
offered to hold her out in the hall so Brian could stay and listen. I knew this
woman from other AERA conferences so I thought it would be okay. This woman
decided that she loved Hannah and so she went back Lawrence after AERA that
year and talked her department chair into flying us all out to Kansas and
talking us into coming there. We had planned to go to the university that we
had been in contact with, but there was a secretarial error that caused me to
get an automatic rejection from that institution. Brian was accepted, but he
said he did not want to go to school unless we both could go, so we planned to
post-pone doctoral plans. We agreed to go to Kansas and then the department
chair I was in talks with from the other university managed to get my rejection
rescinded. This was floored me. Universities, even when it is their error,
rarely rescind rejections. In the end, we determined that we would keep our
agreement and come to Kansas.
San Francisco
2013
Brian’s family
lives in northern California and we had not been there in quite some time, so
while I had three presentations and Brian had two, we still saw as many of the
Rice’s as we could. I was still providing milk for Hannah so we ran into a lot
of the same problems with scheduling conference sessions, sleep, feeding,
eating, and so forth. Brian and I were married in Oakland and I had not been
through there since I got married so it was fun to go back and see the building
where I had my wedding. The precarious event of the trip happened on my way to
my presentation where the heel of my show became stuck in the trolley track. I
struggled to pull it loose for several minutes. It may have been that extra
rush of adrenaline from seeing a trolley car barreling down one of San
Francisco’s many hills that enabled me to yank my shoe out of the track. I was
late to the session and missed my presentation. The chair allowed me to present
last, but it was still disconcerting to go out of order and be in a panic.
Brian arrived at the session with Hannah before I did and wondered where I was.
Little did he know that I was in peril of losing my shoe. Hannah liked seeing
some of her grandparents and cousins. She was very good on the flights. It took
longer to get there from Kansas City than it used to from Salt Lake City, but
both journeys were delightfully uneventful.
This year, AERA is in Philadelphia. Be on the lookout for this year's adventures.
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