Buffy Hamilton

STEVE THOMAS: Hi, this is Circulating Ideas, the librarian interview podcast. I’m your host, Steve Thomas, and our first guest today is Buffy Hamilton. Buffy, the Unquiet Librarian at Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia, is a nineteen year veteran educator and is passionate about creating meaningful learning experiences for her students. She is the GAIT/GLMA School Library Media Specialist of the Year 2010 for the state of Georgia and her Media 21 program was named one of the two exemplary high school media programs in Georgia 2010. Buffy’s Media 21 program is an ALA OITP 2011 Cutting Edge Service Award winner, and she is a 2011 Library Journal Mover and Shaker. She blogs at The Unquiet Librarian, and for ALA Learning. You can follow her on Twitter @buffyjhamilton. Hi, Buffy, welcome to the show.

BUFFY HAMILTON: Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to join you today.

My first question is, I’m going to ask a general… just the Unquiet Library, how did you come up with that name and what led you to come up with that name, because generally, when I think of school media centers, they just call it “the media center”, they don’t really have a name for it.

That’s a great question. When I opened our library in 2006, I really wanted to create a different kind of experience for our students and teachers. And so, I knew that “media center”, as you stated, is just sort of a general term. I wanted to come up with a label or a brand, if you will, for the library that would be something memorable. So, I was inspired by a book I read in graduate school at the University of Georgia called Library: an Unquiet History by Matthew Battles, and I felt like that title in many ways really sort of captured the essence of the idea that I wanted to convey about our library program, that it was going to be a place that was unquiet and teeming with conversations for learning. And so I debuted the label, I guess February of ‘07 I think is when I began our blog, and it actually has turned out to be a great marketing vehicle, if you will, because that’s what everyone knows us as now, as the Unquiet Library. That’s the story of how that moniker came to be for our library program.

And do the students like that name as well?

Oh yes. Oh yes, they really do. That was actually… if they come into the library and a teacher asks them to perhaps dial down their vocal level just a bit, their immediate response has been “This is the Unquiet Library!” So, yes, they do like that term. It’s catchy. So thank you to Matthew Battles for writing a wonderful book, which I recommend as a read by the way if you haven’t read it, but hopefully we’re maybe adding now a new chapter to the history of libraries with the work that we’re trying to do in really putting an emphasis on learning and not things as the focal point of our program and the services that we’re trying to provide.

Right, and that sort of leads into a question I was going to ask about the discussion of “that Seth Godin blog” [where Mr. Godin discusses the future of libraries]. Everybody knows which one I’m talking about.

Oh, yes, that post.

Obviously, all the different librarians had all different views. There were blog posts all over the place that day. Some people were offended by it and some people were on the embracing side. I know you were on the embracing side. One part that I found odd is that every time somebody, usually somebody of Seth Godin’s stature outside of the profession, whenever they write about libraries, librarians go crazy. We seem to have this sense of needing to control how we’re perceived. We don’t like the way some people perceive us sometimes, and I wonder if sometimes the problem is us not projecting what we’re doing, because a lot of the people who were complaining about Seth Godin’s blog were, “Well, we’re already doing this! We’re already doing that!” but maybe the problem is that people don’t know we’re doing those things.

You know, I think it is very interesting, the range of responses that his original post generated. And I think there was a lot of really healthy discourse, but certainly as you observed, I think some of those responses maybe did come from… I don’t know if “defensive” is maybe the right word but maybe from that type of stance. And perhaps more than ever… sometimes people, their immediate reaction is to try to defend what we’re doing because certainly I think there is a lot of concern about the health of the profession, but you know, I felt like his overall points… he did, as people pointed out, hit on a lot of the services or philosophies that many libraries are espousing. As you pointed out, there is, I think, a perception challenge and perhaps this is just a reminder that more than ever we need to be transparent about our practice. But perhaps we really need to be thinking more along the lines of “How are we embedding ourselves, not just in our community, but in other spaces, if you will, virtually and physically, to help raise that level of awareness with people what the 21st century library can be, what those possibilities are. And I think, as you pointed out, some people, perhaps, were a little ruffled that a perceived outsider, if you will, you know… “How dare he make suggestions about libraries?” But when you stop and think about it, he is one of the people that we hope to serve, that we want to try to reach out to people of all types of backgrounds and experiences and so I think for us to at least acknowledge his viewpoint and to at least give it a careful listen, then I think we might be making a mistake if we just automatically tune that out. You know, it reminds me of a journal article I read several years ago, again in graduate school, and it was talking about the influence of Oprah’s Book Club on reading culture in the United States, and of course some people felt Oprah’s Book Club was fluff, and then there was the opposite end of the spectrum in which people lauded her efforts as sort of a renaissance of people discovered reading for pleasure, in helping people discover new books. But at the beginning of this journal article, there was a quote from Dr. Anne Ruggles Gere and she talked about, and she was speaking specifically to English professors at the college level, but talking about how we really needed to listen to the sounds and the noise happening outside our classrooms and think about how did that impact our practice? And I think that speaks to this whole Godin post that maybe it pushes us to a little bit level of discomfort or puts us on the defensive, but nonetheless, we need to listen to what he’s saying and certainly, as you pointed out, maybe it’s just a reminder that we need to find more effective ways of letting people know what libraries can do for our communities.

Yeah, and I think some of it probably is that libraries are being attacked by other people, like in terms of funding and we’re getting funding cut, so whenever anybody writes anything at all that’s slightly critical of libraries, I think there’s just a reflexive action to jump in and defend and I think people are sort of in a defensive posture right now. But I think sometimes posts like that and articles like that can make you uncomfortable and I think sometimes we can learn a lot from becoming uncomfortable. What about that is making us uncomfortable? Is it because we should be doing that, is that why it’s making us uncomfortable? There’s things to be learned from that.

I think he challenged some of the ideals that maybe have traditionally been regarded as pillars, if you will, of librarianship but certainly I think we’re in the midst of a sea change. But when I look at the different posts and exchanges that happened on Twitter I think the healthy and positive thing that has come out of this is that it has generated conversations within the profession as well as interested observers about the mission and the purpose of libraries and that, in and of itself, is a good thing, that’s a healthy debate, but it is, as Dr. David Lankes would say, it’s a conversation for learning for all of us, so I think it would be interested to see other voices besides Godin perhaps chime in and let that be an opportunity for dialogue within and as well as bringing in other voices outside the profession to help us better understand our practice and better serve our communities.

I don’t think necessarily everyone has to agree with everything that he had to say but I think… I thought Bobbi Newman’s post was very good and she didn’t agree with anything he wrote, but she did a very good job of taking another viewpoint and showing it but it got a discussion going, talking about things. Discussion is always good.

Absolutely.

You did talk a little about David Lankes, and his book, the Atlas of New Librarianship. I do have a copy but I have not yet been able to crack it open besides a brief flip through it. I got it for my birthday and with our summer reading program at my library, I just haven’t had time to really get into it.

I understand.

I know you’ve talked about it several times, but can you talk a little about what it is about that book that’s really gripped you?

I’m actually about a third of the way through the book and I should acknowledge that I obviously have an interest in it for two reasons: A) I have a very short piece in it [laughs], but B) he’s someone who’s very much influenced my philosophy of librarianship. But I think what is really great about this book is that it has so many different threads of conversation and, like I said, I’m only a third of the way through, but even with what I’ve read and just working through and flipping through the structure of the book, I love that it is pulling so many different threads of contemporary librarianship and quite frankly, if I were teaching a course, this would be a must-read. Everyone I’ve talked to who’s reading it, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, and what I really like is, the focus really is on ideas and services and again, talking about how do we create these conversations for learning. The whole emphasis is on libraries as centers of learning and the role of the librarian as someone who is a catalyst for connecting people and ideas and passions and helping them maybe discover passions or things of interest that they didn’t realize they had. It’s just a very inspiring and thought-provoking read for any librarian, whether you’re school, academic, public, there’s something in this book for everyone. It transcends any one particular library environment. So, like I said, I’m only a third of the way through because like you, it’s been hectic the last few weeks with the end of the school year and trying to get ready for some conferences later this month but so far, it has been a really moving read for me, so I’m interested to see what my thoughts and interactions are as I hope to get into it more in the next two weeks, and there’s actually going to be a Twitter reading group for the book. If you go to David’s blog, if you just Google “Virtual Dave” then you’ll hit his blog and I believe he has a graduate assistant who’s going to be helping facilitate a Twitter chat, a book discussion, starting I think the week of June 20, if I remember correctly, I just saw that this morning, so if there are people listening that maybe want to participate in sort of an informal conversation about the book, then that might be a great medium for doing that.

Is there anybody else, like Seth Godin or Lankes, inside or outside the profession that you particularly keep an eye on, to get ideas from? I know it’s important to not just be in that echo chamber, just listening to librarians talking about librarians. That’s another thing about the Seth Godin thing, it’s an outside person giving his perspective which sometimes we need.  Are there any other people in particular that you keep up with to get inspiration from?

Oh wow. Well, you know, I think I do follow a diverse group of voices. Just right off the top of my head: Henry Jenkins is someone whose work I really respect. I follow him primarily through his blog but he’s also on Twitter. Howard Rheingold is another person whose work I really respect and I find intriguing. I primarily follow him through Twitter but he’s actually just recently started with, I believe, Scoop.it, he’s curating stories or articles or social media threads about this concept of info attention and people being able to cultivate their own information filters, if you will. So, that’s a new medium, I just got my account set up with, I believe it’s Scoop.it and I’m following his curated page there. I also really like Digital Media and Learning Central. They always have something that speaks to me of interest and they really are primarily, I guess, focused a little bit more on education but it’s a diverse group of different scholars, researchers, people who are out in the trenches in various settings, but the focus is, as their name implies, on digital media and learning. I really enjoy seeing the stories that they’re posting. I’m trying to think if there’s anyone else.  Yeah, there’s quite a few so I don’t want to omit anyone. Probably, I guess the other person who influences a lot of my thinking, although she not necessarily blogging regularly, is Wendy Drexler. Wendy is one of the two people, along with Michael Wesch who really inspired the whole concept of the Media 21 program. Neither of them are librarians but I think a lot of the work they’re doing and their interests intersect the work we do as librarians. Wendy has actually become a wonderful mentor and colleague and has become a sage voice and someone I really respect tremendously. She’s fairly active on Twitter if you’re interested in following her. As I said, she doesn’t blog I think quite as regularly as she did but when she does, it’s something that’s definitely read-worthy. Those are some people outside librarianship that I really enjoy following.

Do you know what her Twitter handle is?

I believe it’s just @wendydrexler. I believe that will take you straight to–yes, that’s her Twitter handle.

You mentioned the Media 21 program and I do want to get back to that and discuss that with you, but just briefly while we’re talking about Twitter and blogs: how important has that become in your professional development? I just clicked over to your Twitter and saw you were following 802 people. How well do you… do you just skim that or do you have certain times when you read it? Because that’s a lot of people to keep track of.

Yes, it actually was a lot more. I did a pretty significant weeding, if you will, a couple of months ago. I think that is a challenge of a lot of these social media streams. It kind of goes back to Howard Rheingold’s concept of info attention that you ultimately have to decide, in your own mind, maybe just some general guidelines or criteria for who you’re going to follow, and also know that it’s organic. It may be that there are some people that you follow and for a year, they really speak to your interests or maybe they’re a great source of learning but then maybe you’re moving on to other ideas and perhaps their Tweeting purposes or content they’re showing may have changed and it’s no longer a good fit. So I think you need to give yourself permission to weed your social media channels from time to time, just like you would a collection or your garden, so to speak.  I use a couple of tools: I use Tweetdeck and of course there are a lot of filtering options in there if you want to focus on certain hashtags, but my activity there, it ebbs and flows, usually early morning or late night is when I tend to be most active but you know, there are periods when things just get really hectic and I’m away for a little while. But that’s the beauty of these learning spaces, that they’re flexible, they’re fluid, you can be as involved or as uninvolved as you need to be because the reality is our personal and professional lives are happening. I like that it’s elastic and you can customize it to fit your needs as a learner. Twitter really is a primary channel for learning for me because there is such a diverse group of people there. I do also use Google Reader to track RSS feeds and iGoogle. Some things I’ll pull directly on to my iGoogle desktop. But again, I weed that from time to time, as well. What I do like about Google Reader, of course, is that you can create folders, so it may be that I have a folder for librarians, a folder for teachers and ed tech people, then there may be folders for digital media or social media, literacy, just different areas of interest. I think you just have to give yourself permission to know that sometimes you can keep up with it really well and other times, it may overflow and it’s okay to just clear all of that and start fresh.

That’s generally how I use Twitter, I sort of dip in when I have time and jump back out,  I’ll respond to something if there’s something there to respond to. A lot of times I’ll just read and follow links. If there is an important story going on, like Seth Godin blog or the HarperCollins/Overdrive thing, there’s enough chatter about it that it’ll show up on your stream, no matter when you pop in.

I think what I really like about Twitter, other than it does give me an avenue to interact with a diverse group of people, is that you can use it as a place to sort of aggregate resources but it can also be a place to connect and have conversations with others. That’s what’s been really powerful about Twitter for me, is that it’s helped me to establish professional relationships with other librarians who aren’t necessarily school librarians, although certainly I’ve met some really fantastic people in my corner of the library world, but it’s also connected me with people outside of librarianship but who still are really informing my thinking. A great example, just in the last couple of months, I’ve connected with Joseph McCallum who’s involved with the National Writing Project and we share an interest in digital writing and so, I’m pretty confident we would’ve probably never connected if it had it not been for Twitter. I believe it was the English chat, which is hashtag #engchat, it happens I believe every Monday evening at 7pm, that’s actually how we originally connected. But again, it’s not library, per se, but so much of what happens in that weekly Twitter chat and of course the work that he’s doing with National Writing Project really speaks to a lot of the work that I’m doing with teachers and students, of course, in this idea of multiple literacies. That’s the beauty of Twitter, people can customize and use it in whatever way works best for them. I don’t think there’s one right way. You just have to try it on and figure out how it works for you and then just roll with it.

I think it’s important in this era of shrinking budgets when not everybody can go to conferences as much as they used to be able to, this is a way to connect with other professionals without having to go to New Orleans or Anaheim or Chicago or wherever the conference might be.

Absolutely, and to experience a lot of the exchange that’s happening. ACRL is a great example. It just so happens there was one day of the conference in March that we were not all that busy in our library because of graduation testing, so we weren’t covered up with classes for the entire day like we normally might be [laughs]. I had a small window of time, I had Tweetdeck open, I was working on some other tasks, but kind of monitoring the flow and all these great resources suddenly were just flowing across Twitter about presentations on embedded librarianship and I believe Char Booth’s presentation on the librarian as the situated educator, again going back to that focus on libraries as learning. And even though I’m not in an academic library, I was so inspired and educated by the content that was coming through that and again, it was a reminder that even though we are in different spaces or corners of the library world, we share so many interests and that we need to be communicating with each other so that we’re not all reinventing the same wheel but again, Twitter gives us a medium to connect and I actually decided to join ACRL this spring when I renewed my ALA membership as a direct result of experiencing the conference through Twitter and now it’s on my must-attend list for 2013. I think that’s a very powerful form of professional development and it doesn’t cost a thing.

I wanted to get back to your Media 21 program. Can you just talk about that, sort of generally, what it is?

Sure. This was a model that really put participatory learning and students creating and diversifying their own learning environments at the center of the classroom experience. The other focal point was to give students and the teacher, Susan Lester, we targeted two sections of tenth grade English, the opportunity to experience the library as a regular part of classroom life. This idea again of embedding ourselves in these learning spaces and breaking down the walls that sometimes exist, I sort of pitched this model to Susan, I believe it was in the spring, late winter/early spring of 2009 and Susan was completely willing to try out these ideas and so we really worked together the majority of the school year as co-teachers. Originally we thought the project would be 9 or 10 weeks, and we wound up working together probably three-quarters of the school year. We did have a brief hiatus in early 2010, in January and February. We were really focusing on students exploring many different types of information sources, not just the traditional forms of authority, of looking at social media as when is that an authoritative source, how do we evaluate and judge that, we were teaching them content creation tools as a medium for publishing their own work, but also as a way of sharing and constructing knowledge with others, whether it was their peers or perhaps experts outside our Creekview community that they might connect to perhaps through their blogs, through Skype, they might grab their RSS feeds, put on their Symbaloo page or their NetVibes dashboard. It was really just trying to help them harness the power of technology and cloud computing not as something else that was on top of classroom life but that it really was part of the seamless experience of learning in our classroom. It was very exciting for all of us and the students really enjoyed, they pretty much met in the library for most of the year because that space gave us a lot of flexibility for inquiry-based activities, small group work, whole group sharing and of course, access to information in ways that sometimes might be a little bit more challenging in the traditional classroom space. I’ll tell you that I think Susan and I learned just as much if not more than the students from the experience. It was probably one of the most rewarding, gratifying experiences of my career. We decided to move forward and work with a second group this past academic year and what’s really exciting for us is that now we have other teachers who are interested in this model and who are starting to implement these principles of participatory learning, of the networked student, if you will, in small segments where the library is helping scaffold those efforts and so I’m really excited to see where we’re going to go with that for the upcoming academic year. I think you know you’re on to something that’s powerful when it’s the last day of planning and teachers are typically they are very weary, very tired. Instead, I spent most of my day in small group or one-on-one meetings, brainstorming and dreaming ideas that we want to, that teachers want us to help them implement and pilot for the upcoming year.  I’m very thankful that I have colleagues that are willing to take risks as teachers and learners themselves to give their students an opportunity to have meaningful, full, authentic learning experiences that are not necessarily defined by a standardized test.

Have you had any interest from other schools or librarians of wanting to use your model at their schools?

Yes, I have had some inquiries over the last two years from colleagues across the county. We’re actually going to be talking a little about that at ALA. I’m presenting with a group of school librarians on Saturday, Jennifer Hubert Swan and some other esteemed colleagues about how we’re embedding ourselves into classrooms and the curriculum and this whole group presentation kind of came out of the fact that they really liked the Media 21 model and wanted to pilot those principles and really position themselves as a co-teacher, if you will, with their classroom teachers across different grade levels and subject areas, so we’ll be sharing a little about that in a couple of weeks in New Orleans, and I’ll make sure that I share and post our slides through Twitter and the blog for anyone who might be interested. It’s very humbling and exciting to feel like something you’re doing can inspire others. It kind of goes back to that bigger idea of how social media can be a medium for transforming our practice because it gives us to connect with so many different colleagues and to share and help each other out and that’s what I love about our profession. People are so willing to share ideas and to brainstorm with you, to talk about the challenges, the joys. I can say without any hesitation, that the work that’s happening in our library, and my own ongoing growth, none of that, I think, would have happened without being connected to so many wise voices through Twitter, blogs, RSS feeds. So, I’m very very grateful to live in this information age that we’re in.

Yeah, it’s a great time to be a librarian.

It really is. It’s exciting and yes, we have our challenges When you get these ideas from other people and you take it and mold it to work for your library environment and you see how it helps people or inspires them or changes them in some positive way, there is, it is the best feeling in the world to feel like you helped someone or you’ve made a positive difference, and that’s what it’s all about.

Well, speaking of Twitter, I’m going to ask you a question that someone asked me to ask you. Diane Cordell asked me to ask you how your experience as an English teacher affected your approach to librarianship?

That’s a really great question. Diane’s good at those. I think it’s impacted me in two ways. One: I really loved being a teacher, so I think that was a great fit for me with the learning focus on libraries. In my program at University of Georgia under the tutelage of Dr. MaryAnn Fitzgerald, who was my advisor and continues to be a mentor to this day, that really was a driving element of the philosophy of school librarianship at UGA which is in complete alignment with AASL, which is our national school library division of ALA, that the library is, our mission is learning, to facilitate learning in all formats and mediums, so that was an excellent fit. The other aspect, and I really see this now, probably more clearly than ever, you know, my last few years teaching, again this was very much influenced by my studies at UGA and this was in the Language and Literacy department, but was really thinking about taking an inquiry stance on literacy in the classroom, an inquiry-based approach and using these critical lenses, if you will, to think about what does it mean to learn? what do we value? Who’s impacted by that? I’ve really come to see just in this last year, how this inquiry stance on learning dovetails so perfectly this model of participatory learning. it’s really a great fit and of course those are foundational elements of the library program and of my philosophy of librarianship, so I think having worked with learners of diverse backgrounds because I taught regular high school but I also taught at our evening school campus as well as the alternative school those experiences helped me to see that people learn in very different ways and that it’s not a one size fits all. So as a library and as a librarian, I need to be aware of that and when we’re teaching our students different skills, we need to be willing and able to help them discover and evaluate information and create content in as many different mediums as possible to really give them a sense of agency and empower them as individuals.

Do you find that when you’re working with students, I think on one of your slides, I know your opinion on this, that whole idea of the digital native that these kids, because they’ve grown up with the internet that they just know how to use the internet. I assume that, it strikes me as wrong, it’s something that maybe the media just grabbed on to and thought it was a good idea and thought “it must be true” but I haven’t found that to be the case.

I think that’s such a misleading label and sometimes a dangerous label because it leads to assumptions. I think in some ways it maybe discriminates based on age. Everyone comes from different experiences and different exposures and I’ve found that students, yes, they know how to surf the web, they know about YouTube, they know about texting, but it’s a very surface-level knowledge with many of these students. Now, some will, they do come with a very deep knowledge of how to manipulate and use these channels of information but many of them really come with a very limited background because they’ve just not had much exposure at home or at school and that’s where we have the opportunity to introduce and provide learning experiences that will help them explore how they can harness the power of these different technologies and tools that are available to them in positive ways that are constructive and helping them establish a positive digital footprint or digital identity. I’ve seen students that flat-out tell you they hate technology. I had a group this year, they weren’t ugly about it but they were very apprehensive and I think it was important for us to acknowledge and honor that anxiety, that fear, and to try to help them find ways to work through it and give them positive experiences to mitigate some of those negative feelings and vice versa I had teachers that have thirty years of experience and you introduce something to them and they take to it like duck to water sometimes more so than teachers maybe with less experience so I think we have to be careful with labels and I know as a culture we love to label and categorize things but I think we do have to be careful about that because it leads to false assumptions and winds up in us not being able to, as Lauren Pressley would say, “meet any learners of any age at their point of need.”

Well, and I think that’s where the idea of transliteracy comes in. It’s an important idea for them to understand because that can help that, that even if they understand how to use a lot of these technologies… YouTube, or whatever, email, any kind of technology, knowing when to use which one, what’s the appropriate time to use or the proper method to use to get an idea out.

Exactly. Sometimes, even a different context in which they could use it. Of course, they get their songs from iTunes but maybe they don’t realize I could create my own book, I could create a digital book report or a digital story, if you will, and put it up for sale if I wanted to on iTunes, I can be someone who creates meaningful content and contributes something positive out there to the information world. So, sometimes, the exciting part of what we do is showing them what the  possibilities could be and then giving them ownership of how creative they want to be or directions that they then want to take those tools and go with them for their own purposes.

Okay, so I have one final question, this is another I got from Twitter, this is one I got multiple times, everyone wants to know. How do you sleep? When do you find time to sleep?

[laughs] There’s this perception out there that I don’t sleep. It’s funny that that came up on Twitter. Interestingly enough, everywhere I go, that’s one of the first things that people ask or they bring it up when they introduce me. You know, some of that may have come out of, when I opened our library program, I actually was teaching evening school for the first three years, so I would do my library thing all day, then I’d run home, then I’d teach typically from 7 to 11 or 6 to 10pm at night which was a bit of a hectic schedule but was a great learning experience for me. I loved teaching night school, it was a fantastic experience but it did put me home at a late hour. So, sometimes you have to wind down for the evening so sometimes that would be the time that I would be active on my blog or Twitter, so I think that’s where that started. I really do sleep. I try to get a healthy amount of sleep. Although, I think it’s like anybody else, you’ll get periods of times that that ebbs and flows or you have deadlines or the adrenaline’s pumping or you get in such a state of flow or you’re so engrossed in something that you discovered because I’ll come across some interesting nugget on Twitter and you know, it’s like going down the rabbit’s hole in Alice in Wonderland, five hours later I’ve explored all these different ideas and I’m excited and I’m brainstorming and it’s late in the evening or the wee small hours of the morning. On a serious note, I do try to get a healthy amount of sleep because it does impact your health. I try to get at least six hours a night and not lose too much of it. I think people catch me at hours that maybe leads to that perception.

You’re kind of out there everywhere. You’re on the blog, you’re on Twitter, you’re doing conferences, you’re writing papers. We just kind of see you everywhere.

I will say that I can be very focused and efficient and I think part of that comes from my mother and my three grandmothers who had a very strong work ethic. I think part of that influences that but I also run, I’ve done one marathon and a couple of half-s, but so much of running is mental concentration and sometimes just getting lost in that sense of flow when you’re so engaged in what you’re doing that you lose track of time. Sometimes that’s part of it, or I know really I need to concentrate on something, then I can do that. I feel fortunate to be in this profession at this time because it is so exciting to be able to learn from others and share and just be a part of this fantastic learning community, I find it energizing. I’m grateful to be part of it.

That’s great. Thank you for being part of my first show, Buffy.

Well, thank you, I appreciate the opportunity to reflect and share with all of you, so thank you.