The conference wasn't too bad, other than being Saturday-Monday and eating up precious weekend hours. As always, some of the workshops were interesting and useful, others not so much (Yes, I realize the importance of good communication. Thank you for your insight.) More than a couple of times I found myself drifting off into space or my own thoughts, having to pull myself back into reality. You know the feeling. Someone is droning on about something that you really should be listening to. Must...pay...attention. Subject...so...boring. Concentration...fading. Diet Coke...only...hope...
I did get a chance to do some fun things. We were in Boston, after all. My boss decided that he wanted our internfrom Colombia to attend as well, so we roomed together and generally hung out together throughout the weekend. We got a chance to talk and she expressed a lot of the same feelings over being overwhelmed on stepping out into a career for the first time; she has the added stress of doing so in a foreign country. We had a good talk about being young and female in clinical engineering, a profession made up predominantly of older men.
She had never seen Boston, or any other large US city for that matter, so it gave me the excusae to do some real touristy things. She wanted to take a tour of the city, so we took the Duck Tour. I highly recommend this for anyone in the Boston area, even those who know the city well. You get loaded into an old WWII amphibious vehicle and are taken on a tour of the city and then into the Charles River. I even bought the tourist photo they snap of you prior to boarding. Later on we took the Ghosts and Gravestones tour. This is also highly recommended. The tour takes through Boston's not so happy past with a trolley tour and a walking tour through a couple of cemetaries.
All in all, it was a pretty good time. We stayed very busy all day long between the conference and the sight-seeing. I don't think I could have kept up the pace for much longer. It is good to be home.
No comments:
Post a Comment