Now that all my videos from the Comparative and International Education Society have been posted, I do believe it was worth all the effort.

But let me tell you, it was an effort.

For starters, it was absolutely pouring rain when I went to the conference and I had my hands full with a laptop, video camera, tripod, photo camera, notebook, pens, lunch, conference program, etc. Not easy right off the bat. (I wish I had a picture of me. I must have looked ridiculous.)

Anyways, as I stated in my first post, the day got more complicated when I went to log into the blog and was denied access. Sheesh. Definitely not what I wanted to happen, especially since there were some really interesting panels going on that I wanted to hit up.

But whatcha gonna do?

I put in a call for help, packed up my stuff and headed to the panel about educational rebuilding in Liberia. Good stuff.

For the remainder of the morning, I ran around like a lunatic lugging all this gear and trying to find people who had a minute or two to chat. (Was actually only turned down by two people, who apparently were too cool for school. Hehehe.)

Feeling good about getting a number of interviews filmed, I decided to give the blog another go.

But wouldn’t you know it, again denied access.

This time, however, I had a few free minutes for a lunch break, and so I got IT on the phone and refused to hang up until the situation was fixed. And it was. Thankfully.

Yet then I encountered another problem. For some reason still unbeknown to me, it was taking FOREVER to upload even short videos. I mean like more than 45 minutes for a video that normally should have taken less than two minutes.

So again I packed up my stuff and headed out to film some more interviews.

After taping what I though was a sufficient amount, I decided to shift gears and focus on writing the story that would run in the newspaper.

I wrote a few graphs, then wouldn’t you know it? Another obstacle.

The main focus of my story was that local Scarsdale teachers would be presenting at the conference, but I hadn’t been able to interview any of the teachers via telephone, and so I had very little to really work with.

At that point, I gave up and called it a day. Just in time for rush-hour traffic. Yeah, good times.

But now looking at the blog, I’m happy I stuck it out. My sincere thanks go out to everyone who participated in the videos. I know you all had enough on your plates as it was, and I appreciate the time and encouragement you provided.

Needless to say, I hope you all enjoy watching the videos and continue to come back to the Hall Monitor for your education news (and a few other random distractions along the way…).

Oh, and post a comment or two from time to time why don’t ya?!