Learning Experiences

Thanks for the encouragement! The presentation went pretty well. It was a bit smaller than I had anticipated--at least the presentation itself was.

The MPSA conference was set up over four days at the Palmer House Hilton about a block west of Millenium Park in downtown Chicago. The hotel was amazing, quite ornate, and buzzing with political scientists and professorial types wearing name tags that list their associated university in font too small to see without intrusively squinting--but everybody does, haha. I found the hotel, received my registration materials, and found my professor (Professor Kohen) without much trouble. We met for lunch at a nearby Deli to discuss the presentation before I decided to attend another panel to see how it was all done. Each session was about one hour and forty-five minutes and I believe they run 4-5 sessions per day. Within each session there were hundreds of panels each comprised of about three-to-five paper presentations grouped by topic. For example, ours was "Rebuilding Societies and Institutions after War."

So our paper was presented with a mix of other papers, each given about 10-15 minutes to inform whoever wanted to attend about the premise of their work. I discovered that this means for a panel to hold an audience of 10-12 people was pretty good. Including our chair/discussant and the other panelists presenting with us, we probably had about 10 or so people to which we presented, which made it a bit easier I must say. The chair/discussant was the person who directed the panel and had prepared comments in advance for each of the panelists. It's amazing the mix of people and papers you get even when it's all organized in this way. Even when people who attend or chair a panel have no real experience with the type of paper a presenter is doing or the region being covered, many still seem to think they can provide solid critiques and sometimes without having read the paper. It's a bit frustrating at times but Dr. Kohen had become accustomed to this and knew to take it all with a grain of salt. So when one particular audience member more or less accused us of cultural imperialism without having read the paper, (though I desperately wanted to defend ourselves) Dr. Kohen less directly responded to this critique. We did, however, gain some helpful feedback to further prepare the paper for publication.

Anyway, this has ended up longer and full of more detail than I intended. Shortly after finishing the presentation, I took the "L" back to Midway airport and headed back home. It was a ridiculously quick trip that left me missing Chicago a lot and wishing I had more time to spend there. But, as always, it is good to come home to the wife. The experience was a very good one, very educational... I would do it again.

Old Stompin' Grounds

Tonight I head back to Chicago for the Midwest Political Science Association Conference at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel near Millennium Park. It will be a brief trip as I plan on returning tomorrow evening. However, this trip will mark a first in my political science career as I will be presenting a portion of a paper I have been working on with a UNL professor and one of his former students in Virginia for the past several months. It's exciting and a bit unnerving to think I will be presenting a political science paper to professors and grad students from all over the country who will probably know much more about anything I have to say than I do. Not to mention my general fear about public speaking. Still it will be a good and growing experience I have no doubt. For those of you not dozing off already... the paper is about developing reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. Fascinating stuff if you ask me--the kind of thing I hope to develop into a career at some point. Here goes nothin!