As a first time ALA annual goer, my real struggle was deciding when to attend sessions and when to have coffee or meet with someone to network. \u00a0Let me just tell you, it is four days later and I didn’t\u00a0find a good answer to my dilemma, except do the best you can to balance both.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My days here at the conference were filled with sessions, meetings, workshops, presentations, informal meet ups, and receptions. \u00a0But every hour was a debate in my mind of whether to go to this session\u00a0or that meeting. \u00a0I had my phone calendar pulled up with the ALA scheduling app, and I would spend the entire 20 minute shuttle ride trying to decide what was most important and where I should go. Then, when someone would ask to have coffee or lunch it added more fuel to the fire. \u00a0I’d have to stop in the middle of my day, re-look at\u00a0my whole schedule and see if I should even say yes to these informal meetings.<\/p>\n
The internal argument in my mind this weekend was constant, and now that there’s only one day left of the conference, I’m still not sure I made all the right choices. \u00a0What if I missed out on a really awesome session? \u00a0What if I lost\u00a0an opportunity to make a connection with another librarian who could be a great resource in the future? What if I didn’t make it to\u00a0that meeting and missed important information? \u00a0What if, what if, what if…<\/p>\n
Well, as we all know, there will always be what ifs. \u00a0But the only things\u00a0we can do is try our best and do all we can. \u00a0And as I’m sitting here,\u00a0reflecting on my experiences over the last few days, I believe I balanced it all decently well (and by decent I mean barely keeping my head above water). \u00a0I missed out on some sessions, but I built relationships and networks with other librarians who gave me great ideas. \u00a0I didn’t go to all the\u00a0meetings, but I was involved in the ones I did go to and networked when I could. \u00a0I didn’t go out with friends, but got some really helpful information and strategies from presentations and panels. \u00a0There were things I missed out on for sure, but whatever\u00a0I was doing instead gave me new ideas and opportunities.<\/p>\n
So next year, if you’re a first time ALA annual attendee like I was, just breathe and know you can’t do it all. \u00a0And that is okay. \u00a0Sessions are great. \u00a0Informal meetings are awesome. \u00a0Formal meetings are wonderful. \u00a0Networking is amazing. \u00a0(Can you see where I’m going with this?) \u00a0Everything at ALA annual is informative and you’ll get excellent ideas to bring back to your home library no matter what you attend or who you talk to. \u00a0Just get out there and find your balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a first time ALA annual goer, my real struggle was deciding when to attend sessions and when to have coffee or meet with someone to network. \u00a0Let me just tell you, it is four days later and I didn’t\u00a0find a good answer to my dilemma, except do the best you can to balance both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[913,151,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ala-annual-2017","category-live-blogging","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}