The People Who Will Inspire You Some More

I’m in Atlanta at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association. I’ve been invited to participate in a global health round table tomorrow morning, so I’m pretty excited about that. Unfortunately, I arrived a little late today, so I missed the opening plenary session. Still, I managed to go to a whole bunch of poster presentations. I also bought a book and had it signed by the authors (two very bright and wonderful women).

It was strange to me that all the people I talked to about my dissertation thanked me for the work that I was doing for that dissertation. A little bit of the “impostor syndrome” crept in. But then I found myself congratulating others and thanking them for their work.

Anyway, about the poster presentations. I am always impressed by how many different projects everyone is working on. There were posters on social issues, infectious disease, new technologies, new ways of doing things, and other topics. There was a deaf researcher talking about public health interventions to benefit the deaf, talking to a small group of people via his sign language interpreter. There was a woman in a wheelchair talking about issues related to physical disabilities. There were people with accents from all around the United States and all around the world.

And all of them inspired me. All of them made me feel a little less alone. It feels like I’m part of a big team instead of just a band of troublemakers. That’s what I like about these meetings.