Okay, now that the combination of jet lag and epic dancing has worn off, have I got a story for you!

Last Thursday, I made my ninth cross-Atlantic flight from Edinburgh to Washington, D.C. As amazing as it would have been just to fly to my nation’s capital, I actually was flying with a purpose. Over a year ago, I started doing some research with Dr. Roemer Visser and Dr. Lesley Tomaszewski, examining whether or not gender based differences in peer performance appraisals existed. After a TON of work, we submitted a research abstract to the Academy of Human Resource Development for their 2009 International Research Conference in The Americas, and it was accepted! We had submitted our work before I left for Scotland, so I had no idea what would happen if our work was positively reviewed, but I was fortunate enough to be sponsored to fly all the way from Scotland to help present our work to other human resource development professors, graduate students, and professionals.

The conference, though I have attended many before, was my first where I was involved in presenting anything. It definitely gave me a different perspective than previous conferences. In D.C., I still attended other presentations, but was more focused on networking and building on the ideas that we had come up with for own research than simply absorbing new material as I had in past conferences. I was not incredibly familiar with human resource development; at Mays Business School, I had studied human resource management, but not development. In my mind, I had grouped the two together. When I looked at the conference program, however, and saw other presenters from Texas A&M, individuals that I knew were not from Mays Business School, I learned that human resource development is actually in the College of Education rather than Business. For me, this is a little counterintuitive; shouldn’t the study of how to manage your human resources and how to develop your human resources be looked at collectively?

Anyway, we gave our presentation on Saturday morning, and while the audience was not huge at 8:30 in the morning, we did have some fantastic feedback about ways to advance our study. The really exciting part was that I felt like we were being given some serious affirmation; beyond our research being accepted by the Academy, here were these professionals getting excited and involved in what we had to say. Based on that dialogue and some additional data we’ve collected, I’m hopeful that we will be able to produce a full paper in the next few months or so.

Well, surely that must be the end of the story—I mean, I had this amazing professional development opportunity with great results, right?

But then that would be a short story, and suspiciously void of dancing.

If you haven’t read any of my previous blogs, I am a wee bit obsessed with any and all forms of dancing. I teach swing dancing two nights a week in Edinburgh, dj as often as I can, am on two performance teams, and am helping promote a swing dance company through the management side. So, when I was in D.C., I naturally headed over to the local lindy hop scene to check out the scene. I met some great people and had some good dances, but had expected a little more out of our capital. At this point, my swing levels were dangerously low, and I was needing some excellent dancing.

Not to worry, though, I had a backup plan!

Once we had given our presentation and I had the all clear from Dr. Visser and Dr. T., I headed back to the airport and flew north, across the border, to chilly and snowy Montreal to catch the second half of a blues dance exchange, Montreal Bagel ‘N Blues! The whole theme of the exchange was bagels, which meant lots of delicious treats all weekend.

The swing dancing community is incredible mobile, so many of my friends from Texas were at this exchange, in addition to the dozens of close friends I’ve developed through my years of traveling and dancing. There was so much snow in Montreal, but we mostly kept inside, dancing until 7:00 in the morning. Besides the wonderful dancing and sightseeing, I received even more affirmation on this trip…

…I won a blues contest! Around 4:00 am Sunday morning, the organizers announced an impromptu blues contest. My friend David from Santa Fe and I looked at each other, shrugged and said, “Why not?” and proceeded to have a good time on the dance floor. Much to our surprise, we won the contest! Besides a spiffy bagel medal, I now have free passes to BABBLE, or the Big Apple Balboa/Blues/Lindy Exchange in New York City in April; whether or not I can actually go is a whole ‘nother matter.

David, two other friends and I were meant to be flying to our respective homes on Monday, but not out of Montreal due to cheaper ticket prices in various places in New England. In order to make it in time, we decided to leave the late night dance in Montreal around 3:00 in the morning, drive three hours across the border, catch three hours of sleep in a hotel in Vermont, and keep driving to Manchester, New Hampshire, and Boston, Massachusetts. Phew. That was a tough trip. It was snowing so hard that we could only drive about 30 miles an hour at some points. After we dropped Rachel and Patrick off in New Hampshire, though, David and I had plenty of time before our flights, so we walked around downtown Boston before heading to Logan Airport. Of course, while there, we HAD to blues dance in the middle of the terminal. I’m not entirely sure what the airline officials thought of us, but it was a lot of fun.

After all that, I still had to fly to D.C., catch a connecting flight to London Heathrow, then one more to Edinburgh. For the first time in my many flights, I slept through all of them. This turned out to be incredibly fortunate, as I had to run immediately to class when I got back into Edinburgh, then head over to Zoot Swing for three hours of lessons—and the one I was teaching started at 9:30 pm! Needless to say, I was pretty tired!

So there you have it—one of the busiest weekends of my life. It involved crossing 10 time zones, 6 flights, and a 7 hour road trip, academic development and dancing joy. Give me another week to recover, and I’ll be ready for the next one!