Conferencing

So, I arrived in conference city two days ago, endured a four (yes, 4!) hour board meeting the first night, then barely slept afterwards, since I was still cobbling together the last half of my paper. I got up the next morning at the crack of dawn and finished it (more or less--okay, less) and headed over from the hotel to the campus. The session I was chairing was pretty well attended, had lots of good papers, including one that I was very impressed with (and that actually provided all the answers to the essay question I just handed out in my grad seminar). The presenter is a 2nd year doctoral student at UC Riverside and had a brilliant grasp of contemporary French social theory and critical ethnography. Also, one of our undergrads was in my session and did a really impressive job, as well. The campus here has lots of great trees. And apparently an aboretum that I'll have to go find. I took the photo below on my first stroll across campus on Thursday evening. Pretty amazing. We don't have these trees where I live.