Late Night Musings
by Todd Reemtsma, NBS Section Chairperson
The Gift
It was great to see so many members of our section at Hamline University 
in Saint Paul, MN for the USITT-NBS 2011 Fall Conference. A huge‘thank you’ to our hosts and organizers!
I want to offer congratulations to the students that were chosen for NBS Scholarshipsto the 2012 USITT Annual Conference in Long Beach! 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 no time at all it will be March and many of us will be on our way to Long Beach, California for the 52nd edition of the USITT Annual Conference March 28th – 31st, 2012. If you are attending the conference, please plan on joining other members of the Northern Boundary Section on Thursday, March 29th, 2012 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.
Around this time of the year most of us are in a “gift mode”. Whether that might be trying to choose a holiday gift for someone or offering suggestions for a gift you hope to receive. It is certainly true that the board members of the Northern Boundary Section would love to be in a financial situation to offer a larger number of scholarships and have more of our student membership attend the Annual Conference! However, my suggestion for this holiday season is a gift to yourself. A gift more precious than anything you might buy in a store or redeem from a gift card – time. “What are you talking about?” might be running through your head right now. Certainly time is a finite commodity (as far as we know), but it’s the use of and management of time that I’m talking about. No matter who you are or what stage of your career you are in, it is incredibly important to take time for yourself and away from your career. A step away every now and then, even for a short period, is a gift to yourself of time for reflecting and recharging. It’s good to be busy and most of us thrive on the “show must go on” mantra, but the time away can allow us a chance to step back and take a look at how we can better manage our time and work more efficiently when we hit those busy periods.
With all of that being said, I hope that everyone has an opportunity for time with family, with friends and some time to themselves this holiday season and look forward to being in touch in 2012!
If it’s not fun, why do it? - Ben & Jerry (of ice cream fame)
Todd