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Emotions are mixed. Isn’t that always the way of it when you’ve had an intense experience? On one hand, I’m so eager to get home and back to my regular life – the text messages from my teenage daughters just add to that longing, because you cherish those times when they say “I can hardly wait to see you, Mommy!”

But the collegiality of this group of random souls thrown together for a dozen days of intense learning and collaboration is an experience that stands up next to those life experiences we hang onto long past the actual experience.

I’d like to thank Steve Elliott (“two t’s, two l’s”) first and foremost. I’ve participated in many workshops, seminars, institutes, graduate programs and you name it (please note the lack of final serial comma, Steve) over the years, and this programs ranks way up there. Billed as an intense workshop experience, the institute definitely lived up to that promise. Steve kept us on task with good humor, gentle persistence and consummate professionalism that I would expect from a veteran of the AP and member of the ASU community. I learned a helluva a lot, Steve. Thanks.

Seriously, if someone would pay me to go to school and write stuff for a living while I hung out with cool people, I’d take that job in a New York minute – and I’d work this gig for sure.

Living arrangements and details to our creature comforts have been considerate and filled with obvious attention to detail, and Anita Luera deserves major kudos. The Sheraton, the food (thanks, Chad and gang!), the swag (can ANYone tell me what that acronym means??) – if the devil is in the details, well, there’s a pun about Sun Devils in there somewhere, but it’s past midnight and I’m cooked..…Anita, you rock!!

By the way, about that editing experience for the online pub? Wow. Thanks to Nicki, Nate and Meghan and everyone else who pitched in to make the Cronkite Chronicle a professional publication – we all did it!!

Cheers to all – it’s been a fabulous and inspiring ride. Let’s keep in touch.

Leslie Wolfe-Cundiff
Centennial H.S.
Roswell, Ga.