The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I arrived back in Hometown on Tuesday evening (I am SO done with flying this year!) and am now recuperating from Big Society's Annual Meeting.

I have so many stories to tell about my time in Boston and will post them in the coming days. For now, a synopsis:

The Good: The Big Boys of North Country studies LOVED my papers and said such things as "Your work is very important for North Country studies" and "This is truly original work that will help North Country studies move forward in significant ways" to me and to my profs (who made it a point of telling me afterward). I always thanked them for their encouragement and inwardly thought to myself, "You know that I'm just talking about rocks, right?".

The Bad: I ate something that didn't agree with me Friday night and had stomach cramps the entire conference (I could barely stand up straight even when I was presenting). I'm relieved, though, because my friends who knew told me that nobody would have guessed that I wasn't feeling well.

The Ugly: I was sharing a hotel room with two other people, one who is my friend and one who is my colleague. I have discovered that my colleague will never be my friend. I had an interview with a school this weekend and didn't wish to disclose which school. I explicitly said to Colleague, "I've found being on the job market to be an incredibly stressful experience and I don't want to tell anyone which school it is in case I don't get the job." Colleague pressed Friend after I left the room to find out which school was interviewing me (Friend, of course, didn't tell her). What part of "I don't want you to know" did Colleague not understand?

And now that the "fun and games" are over, I shall get down to some serious work.