Pandemic Conferences: the In-Person Edition

I went to a conference yesterday, an in-person conference.

The last time I went to an in-person conference was the AWP in San Antonio in March 2020.  I wrote a series of posts about it at the time, as people decided not to come in the face of this new flu-like disease.  We didn't wear masks, but we were fairly safe as very few people were in the audience of any given session; we practiced social distancing, even though we wouldn't have called it that at the time.  Because it was spring in San Antonio, we ate almost every meal outside.  Looking back, the conference itself wasn't a huge risk to my physical health, although the air travel was.

I wasn't sure what to expect yesterday as I arrived at the Marriott resort and conference center.  I went through the resort lobby, where everyone was wearing masks.  I had my mask on too.  I walked through the outside courtyards and pool area to get to the conference center.  I saw a huge ficus tree--surely they designed the resort to leave some of the old growth trees standing.  The whole effect made me feel like I was in a compound made of ancient stone, on some distant tropical island, all by myself.

Sadly, that feeling did not last when I got to the splendid conference area where I was the only one wearing a mask.  I checked in under the glare of fluorescent light and risk taking humans.  I want to believe that we're all vaccinated, but now I know that even vaccinated people can contract and spread the Delta variant.

I was at a conference of Florida people who work in post-secondary schools; have they not been reading the reports I have?  I've been hunched over disease rates and hospital statistics like an old wise woman over her tea leaves and runes.  I've been thinking it's time to cancel large events like this conference and the graduation we have planned for the end of the month.  After I checked in, I thought about adding a second mask to my face.

I found my group of fellow administrators here for the FAPSC conference, and I put my stuff on a chair.  I went to check out the breakfast, which I had assumed would be limp pastries and not-hot-enough coffee.  I was so wrong.  I have rarely had such a beautiful offering of chunked fruit.  And there were eggs and breakfast meats.  If one wanted limp pastries, there was a table, but I loaded up on fruit.

Since we had all taken our masks off to eat, I left my mask off for the keynote address.  When it was time to go to breakout sessions, I kept my mask on.  I was amazed that the rooms for the breakout sessions were arranged as if for pre-pandemic times, which is a shame, because there was room to space the chairs out.  I took it upon myself to move my chair out of its neat row.  

During the day, I kept an eye on who was sitting near me.  I am fully vaccinated, but I've read the reports, and I know better than to place all my bets on vaccination.  If I was sitting near someone outside of my table group, I kept my mask on.  If I could do it, I moved my chair away.  When I was out in the main areas, moving from place to place, I kept my mask on.  I washed my hands a few extra times here and there.

It felt both strange and scary and wonderful to be back in a glitzy conference facility, with delicious food served throughout the day.  The breakout sessions had some nuggets of information that will be useful, along with premises that don't apply to me, like that I have an Admissions team, one that I can fire at will.

During our breaks, I kept my distance and read the book I had chosen for the Sealey challenge, Jane Hirshfield's After.  I thought about literary conferences and wondered if it would ever feel safe to be in big groups like the AWP.  I let Hirshfield's poems comfort and inspire me.

On to the next day of the conference and hoping I'm not attending a superspreader event.