Conference is getting close...OT students are getting excited!!

AOTA Conference is getting so close! It's really exciting!

I'm Karen, a second year MOT student in Memphis, TN. I'm going to Long Beach along with my OT classmates Brooke (Class President) and Meg (AOTA Rep) on Tuesday of that week in April, so that Meg is there in time for ASD meetings! We are looking forward to the plane ride together, but not looking forward to navigating LAX to Long Beach! We got cheap tickets at least...well, "cheap" being relative.

Brooke and Meg went to last year's AOTA conference in St. Louis, but this is my first time. All my classmates who went to conference last year talked about the ENERGY that permeated the conference - the power of so many people invested in occupational therapy, all in one place. I'm looking forward to experiencing that OT power myself! Plus Brooke brought me home this giant canvas bag full of free goodies like pens! Let's face it, nothing is more exciting than a free pen. Seriously!! Kind of.

Anyway, I can't wait to see the exhibits and can't wait to hear some big names in OT speak. We all need to figure out which conference sessions we most want to go to, along with backups! We'll split up as needed of course. Even if the information in some sessions goes over my head, it's nice to have exposure.

The thing I most look forward to at AOTA Conference is NETWORKING. I've made many online OT friends - students and practitioners and professors and even a public ACOTE member! - through my OT student blog, and I look forward to getting to meet some of them, as well as making some new friends and contacts. I'm actually somewhat shy in real life (people all over the world are choking as they read that line), so I'm going to do my best to mingle!

And finally, full disclosure: ::hides face in shame::, but I have "business" cards. Yeah, business cards. Or perhaps they would be more aptly named "contact" cards. With my name, e-mail address, telephone and school on it. I figure it's a lot easier to give one to someone who wants to exchange information, than awkwardly hunting for a pen and then tearing off a piece of paper from an old receipt and trying to write neatly against a wall or something. So...maybe that's going overboard and I *WAY* overthought that, but if you all join me, then at least I'm not the only dork...

Karen
karen.dobyns@gmail.com
otstudents.blogspot.com