{"id":142,"date":"2011-10-01T10:37:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-01T15:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.designswithapurpose.com\/test-blog\/convention-stories-8\/"},"modified":"2011-10-01T10:37:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-01T15:37:00","slug":"convention-stories-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/convention-stories-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Convention Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
Kelsey Hixson-Bowles<\/span><\/div>\n
Student Advisor, 2011-2012<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span>Kansas State University<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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As I slowly come out of my post-convention shock and back into \u201creal life,\u201d I\u2019ve begun to process all the events that occurred. After flying into Pittsburgh and registering for the convention, I eagerly flipped through the program to pick out the sessions I wished to attend. I picked out a few \u201cmust sees\u201d and then went to the showing of <\/span><\/span>Away We Go<\/span> and won a copy of the movie, which I later had signed by Dave Eggers himself! Speaking of speakers, I thought all the keynote speakers were fabulous and inspiring, but I was particularly inspired by Dave Eggers. His tone was humorous, if a little nervous, but his message was clear: pursue your purpose in life. He said, \u201cNever underestimate your words and their power,\u201d which was the best way to end our Beyond Words themed convention.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The bad poetry night and the open mic night were also a blast. Our student leaders really did a great job this year providing fun social activities and a wonderful informational student leadership workshop. My group decided to divide and conquer by sending one person to each of the sessions offered. I went to the personal publication and grant writing seminars, which were both useful in my pursuit of service projects and creative writing.<\/span><\/div>\n

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For those who have never been to a Sigma Tau Delta convention, I seriously recommend it. Bringing so many English scholars together in one place encouraged a think-tank atmosphere and we could almost see the ideas zipping through the air. I know I was inspired by the panel presentation from The College of New Jersey called \u201cComing to the Convention as a Crowd.\u201d The students and advisors on this panel had so many great ideas about how to encourage service projects, fundraising, paper\/panel submissions, and group bonding, all to create interest in going to the convention. The tips I took from that panel are sure to help me in my quest to vitalize the High Plains Region and get more of our chapters to the convention next year.<\/span><\/div>\n

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This year was also special because I joined the list of presenters. I read a short story and gave a panel presentation called \u201cCan a Novel Unify a Campus?\u201d Even though I didn\u2019t bring back a convention award, the experience of sharing my work and research was invaluable and good practice as I move along in my college career and start looking towards grad school. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Apart from the sessions and speakers, my experience was enriched by the people I met. One night, my group from Kansas State University ate dinner with this past year\u2019s High Plains Student Representative, Michelle Webb. The conversation was lively and the experience of eating a coleslaw and french-fry infused sandwich off layers of wax paper will be in my memory forever. I also had the opportunity to get to know my fellow K-Staters on a deeper level which will help us work as a stronger leadership team on campus. <\/span><\/div>\n

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The benefits of attending the Sigma Tau Delta convention are innumerable. It\u2019s an experience that I will always be thankful I gave to myself and I hope that next year even more students attend when we take things down south to New Orleans! <\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kelsey Hixson-Bowles Student Advisor, 2011-2012 Kansas State University As I slowly come out of my post-convention shock and back into \u201creal life,\u201d I\u2019ve begun to process all the events that occurred. After flying into Pittsburgh and registering for the convention, I eagerly flipped through the program to pick out the sessions I wished to attend. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-convention","category-society-wide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wordybynature.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}