December, 2013 Issue   
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Late Night Musings from the Chair

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Late Night Musings


by Todd Reemtsma, NBS Section Chairperson

I get knocked down, but I get up again.
    A great big thank you to the folks at Southwest Minnesota State University that hosted and organized the 2013 NBS Fall Conference this past September in Marshall, Minnesota and to all those that attended!  Thank you to everyone for their patience on a lengthy, but ToddRvery productive membership meeting.  Fortunately our lengthy meeting was followed by a fun time bowling for many of us.  Hopefully everyone who attended had a very productive weekend and for those who didn’t attend, hopefully we’ll see you next year.  Who’s up for hosting next year?  Congratulations to the Cover The Walls winners who won free conference passes to the 2014 USITT Conference. 
    I also want to offer congratulations to the students that were chosen for NBS Scholarships to the 2014 USITT Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas!  Thank you to everyone who applied, to all the faculty members who encouraged their students to apply and wrote letters of recommendation, and to the scholarship reading committee for their time and effort.  Please check out the article in this newsletter to find the list of winners.
    In a few short months many of us will be taking advantage of the close proximity of the next USITT Conference and jumping in our cars to drive to Fort Worth, Texas for the 54th edition of the USITT Annual Conference March 27th – 29th, 2014.  If you are attending the conference, please plan on joining other members of the Northern Boundary Section on Thursday, March 27th, 2014 from 8:00AM – 9:15AM in a room that is yet to be determined for our section meeting.  If you have agenda items that you would like to see covered, please drop me or one of the NBS officers a line prior to that date.
    It’s December 2nd, 2013 as I am writing my article for the newsletter and I’m sitting in the Seattle airport headed back to the Twin Cities the day after finishing my 27th marathon.  I might add that it’s my slowest marathon to date.  Certainly I am disappointed that I was not able to finish faster, but I also recognize that the result is certainly in direct correlation with the training, or lack thereof, that I was able to put in over the last couple of months.  What does running have to do with NBS? Nothing. Everything.  As I contemplated what I would contribute to this issue of the NBS Newsletter, I realized that managing expectations and working through disappointments is an aspect of so many areas of our lives.  All of us would like to be absolutely brilliant every time we design or run a show and turn in perfect projects every time.  We all know that is not the reality and too often there are so many things that prevent that “perfection”.  But if we step back and look at what prevented us from doing the best we know we are capable of doing, we can try to create a better process for success for our next effort. Like so many things in life there will always be ups and downs, but ultimately I will conclude with the same phrase I always do…

If it’s not fun, why do it?
  - Ben & Jerry (of ice cream fame)

-Todd