The Conference
“Shoes?” “Yup.” “Camera?” “Got it.” “Flash drive?” “Shit. Thanks. Almost forgot it.” I rushed to the desk drawer and grabbed the flash drive with my PowerPoint on it. My wife and I had a tradition of this checklist run-through every time I traveled for a conference. It was created out of necessity because I never had my head on straight and would invariably call from the destination whining about forgetting one important thing or another. “How long are you going to be gone this time?” my wife asked. “I’ll be back in three days. It’s just a weekend conference. No big deal,” I assured her. I was a 3rd year in a doctoral statistics program, which meant much of my time was spent sweating over some presentation, or flying to a random conference to talk …