The CRA-W Grad Cohort is an all women, all expenses paid conference thing that is mostly about networking and helping women in computing find a support structure and some role models for themselves. It was a two-day deal: all day Friday, and half a day Saturday. We got in on Thursday night and got back to Charlotte late Saturday night. We would have stayed longer but exam week was coming up and we needed to get back to school to study.
Flights there were long and boring, but no problem. I entertained myself with the SkyMall magazine. Here is a sampling of what you can buy:
Classy. Real classy. I'm trying to figure out the audience that this stuff is marketed to. Travelers, obviously, but who really buys these things?
We changed planes in Texas, with an hour to spare between our two flights, but it took forty-five minutes to get between the terminals. Unfortunately that was supposed to be our dinner stop. I was hungry and ready to gnaw my neighbor's arm off, but lucky for me (and my neighbor) we were flying Continental, which serves meals and snacks. Oh Continental Airlines, I love you. I would fly Continental everywhere if I could. I am never hungry or thirsty on their planes. They gave us a turkey hot dog wrapped in a crossiant and a salad. It was epically delicious (or I was epically hungry, one).
The coolest thing we saw on the way there was this giant mountain. I don't know what mountain it is but it's pretty, and big.
When we got back to the hotel, Domino's Pizza Tracker was our faithful friend since we were still hungry. Our delivery person was superspeedy. Our pizza was awesome.
There were six of us from Clemson who went to this conference. One's missing from this picture.
The most helpful sessions I attended were about networking and work-life balance. There were a couple boring sessions and a couple that were good but didn't really teach me anything I didn't know. Overall, good experience. I learned some, and it's always good to just see a whole bunch of other women in a room talking about technical stuff. The strangest thing at women's conferences, though, is being a minority at a minority conference. The ladies there were predominantly Asian, which, of course, I have nothing against, it's just strange feeling like a minority in that way.
I saw a few people I already knew from other conferences here. I unexpectedly ran into Evie again--she's following me! I met some new people. I got into an argument about whether there was anything different about being a mother and being a father. I asked my second question at a conference ("can you tell me more about being a part of a dual career couple?"). I drank lots of Tazo Wild Sweet Orange Tea and was hungry at very strange times due to the change of three time zones that my body had endured. I ate A LOT because the food was awesome at every single mealtime, and I only worked out in the hotel gym once with mediocre effort.
I didn't get to see any of Seattle, which I was sad about. The one free time we had was Friday night. Google and Microsoft had hosted a dinner reception and dance party. I ate dinner then went to lay in bed, but could have went out then, except I didn't have anyone to go out with. I'll just have to go back sometime.
The reception had some interesting cheeses.
Flying back was a little stressful because there was rainy weather that caused our flight to be late landing into Chicago. We didn't arrive into Charlotte until 1AM or so. I sleepily drove home and everyone else drove back to Clemson.
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