Manic Monday....literally.

Clicking on this link yesterday right before I ran off to teach made me practically catatonic. I literally jumped out of my chair and ran to find someone in my office suite that I could gape at while trying to explain why I was freaking out.

Now, I realize that those hundreds of people, specialists in my field, will quickly start browsing that document, using the find feature to look up their particular topics of interest or people they'd like to see present at this conference. This means that they won't really notice that first name of hundreds of names. Still, it shook me to the core and led to an incoherent rambling on Classical Greek art in my classes. My poor students. I am the worst teacher this semester.

I'm just overwhelmed with what I've gotten myself into. RSA is the most important conference for my specific time period, and probably the second most important conference in all of art history, for those of us working on the early modern period. I'm just not sure I'm ready for this. It's a big step from training to be a good art historian to actually being one. Apparently I'm taking that step this year. I don't want to fall flat on my face. At least I'll get to present my paper on the first day, at the first round of sessions for that day, and then spend the rest of my time meeting people, listening to papers, and playing in Italy. Not too shabby.