The National Forum on Character Education, aka my very first business trip!

I have the day off of work today because I just arrived home from the 18th National Forum on Character Education in San Francisco, CA. As I've mentioned before, the Forum--my organization's annual conference--has been my main focus since starting my fellowship at CEP. I've been actively involved in many parts of organizing and planning the event, so it was really great to see all of that hard work come to fruition over the past week. There were a few minor setbacks throughout the event (I was particularly upset because one of the donations I arranged never showed up) and there were many moments when I was stressed or confused, but that is to be expected when planning an event for around 600 people. There is so much to keep track of. Still, everyone at CEP assured Sarah and me that this year's conference was one of the most successful Forums in CEP's history. Hooray!

My favorite part of the Forum was definitely meeting the conference participants (largely educators) with whom I have been emailing and speaking for the past few months. Putting faces to names was really fun, and everyone was so nice! Since I had been in charge of giving out scholarships to schools with tighter budgets, it was particularly rewarding to see how grateful the scholarship recipients were to be able to attend the Forum.

Now that the Forum has come and gone, however, I'm feeling a little lost. I imagine I'm feeling like a parent whose child just left for college, or, as I told my coworkers on Saturday afternoon once we were officially done with everything, it feels like the day after Christmas--so much excitement and hard work, and now it's over! I know I'll still have plenty to do at work, so now I just need to get excited for what's coming next.