IC 2023 – Part 1

[Edit: This must be about the 4th time I’ve come back to this post, I keep getting distracted and never getting round to finishing it]

So Wednesday starts. IC hasn’t officially begun – Wednesday is the day that all the students arrive, but IO staff, ADs and BoT members mostly arrive on Tuesday, with some coming later when they’re able. That means that we tend to use Wednesday for activities for those people who are there. So from 9 – 3 we had AD sessions. It was good to share with others, thinking about our affiliates and IO and how we can continue to support and grow the organisation. We also had sessions on DEIB and Project Management both of which were interesting.

After that I went for a quick trip down to the bottleshop to buy a couple of bottles of wine for myself and others. The story of that wine will come up later… Once I got back I went to Target with a couple of other ADs to get a few things we needed. Things that you forget about because you have them at home and then when you get to uni accommodation you remember that nothing is provided! As part of the conference we get a pillow two sheets (both unfitted ☹️) a blanket and two towels. That’s all – nothing else. So a few of this things we picked up included a bath mat, a tea towel, sponges and detergent and wine glasses.

When we got back we swung by Cyd & Brenda’s (former AD/AD) who always do a huge amount of cooking and put on an amazing spread for all the staff staying in north housing. We then had a little bit of time before the appreciation dinner. I headed down early to go to the alumni get together. I met some new people and knew a few others from last years, it was fun to hang out. We then headed downstair to the appreciation dinner. Both the food and the wine was good, although the wine wasn’t cheap at $US10/glass.

Probably the coolest thing at the dinner though was one of the people I met. There was a lady called Jane who was there with a few others from Kentucky. One of those ladies is from Irvine. She knows the Smiths, who I stayed with when I competed in IC back in 2006. How amazing and how cool is that! It was very exciting. After dinner we headed back and I decided to go to bed pretty early – I knew Thursday would be a long day once evaluation begun. And that’s where we’ll pick up tomorrow.