Finalizing CSSE

Well, CSSE started out with such promise (see entries on First Impression of CSSE and Finding An Academic Position), but ended for me as a bust - but not because of anything CSSE did.

It appears that Monday morning, the same Monday morning that I was supposed to give my roundtable session at CSSE, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) decided to stage an illegal, wildcat strike. Now being a Canadian and a former teacher, I'm as much a union guy as the next and prior to Monday I supported the TTC in their efforts to fight management for safer working conditions - which was the biggest issue on the table, driver safety. However, after simply walking off the job with little to no warning - leaving the 770,000 people who rely upon the TTC to commute back and forth to work, not to mention the 8,000 people in town for the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (which is the larger entity that hosts the CSSE annual meeting).

In any regard, after 90 minutes of calling one phone company and then another 25 minutes on hold - only for the cell phone I was using to drop the call - then another 45 minutes of calling and an additional 20 minutes on hold, we finally got a hold of a taxi (keep in mind we started dialing at 7:30am). At this stage I was less worried about the conference and more worried about giving Lisa (my wife) enough time to renew her visa, so we went straight to the airport. Needless to say that for the first timein my life, I had an accepted presentation and had intended on going to the conference to deliver it and was unable to do so.

All in all, I enjoyed what I got to attend of CSSE and would go back again next year. Hopefully Saskatchewan won't have any transit trouble while we are there...

Tags: CSSE, graduate student, graduate students, graduate school, higher education, education