I gave my first conference presentation!!

Well another week as come and gone, and I am writing this after spending the last 4 hours glued to the television watching the Academy Awards. If you did not know, I live for Awards season, I have no idea why, probably the fashion... But I never miss an awards show....Now many of you maybe thinking... How does she have time to watch 4 hours of TV.... Well with careful planning! I have to really delegate my time when it comes to the weekends, but I finished all my readings early this afternoon. This week was a hectic one, as you can tell by my earlier post I recited all my assignments that were due up until March 2, so the second finally came and went and all the projects papers and exams are finished for a bit. This weekend though, was my first conference presentation. I am pretty sure if you ask anyone who was with me, I get quite nervous before any exam or any presentation. But thanks to a great support system I was able to make it through! I would like to note here, that my cohort pointed out to me after a few glasses of wine Saturday evening, that I have not named all of them in my blog to date.... so I am including a picture, so that you can see most of us... A few people could not be there the night this was taken...So from left to right, we have Josh, Marcus, and Ray... (See Ray... your name is now on my blog!!!) Both Ray and Marcus attended the presentation on Saturday and were great support. I co-authored this conference paper with Josh called Multi-Leader Team Work: An Empirical Assessment of the Influences of Shared Leadership and Cohesion on Team Effectiveness. I have pasted in the abstract, in case any of you were fascinated by the title and wanted to know a bit more... if not just keep scrolling and we can get to the rest of the week! :)
Abstract:
Assessing team effectiveness is important for researchers and managers as team work becomes more common within firms. The purpose of this study is to further expand research on team effectiveness by determining the influence of shared leadership on the theoretical model of effectiveness proposed by Cohen and Bailey (1997). Data was collected from 151 undergraduate business students in order to empirically examine the relationships among shared leadership, cohesion and team effectiveness. The findings suggest that shared leadership influences both team effectiveness and cohesion in a manner similar to leadership forces exhibited by a single, appointed leader. The detailed findings of the relationships are reviewed and discussed, and implications for researchers and managers are provided. So that is what are paper was about... We actually came up with the idea for a class project and then refined the idea and sent it on to a conference. The rest of the week was not as exciting, but just super busy. I am very excited for the up coming week, tomorrow I am headed to see Alice and Wonderland, then on Wednesday my mom is coming for a visit. After my Experimental design class on Wednesday I am officially on Spring Break until the 22nd! To say that is exciting is an understatement. So my mom is coming here for a few days, we are planning some shopping and she is kind enough to help my start packing for my move in May. Then I am headed to Oklahoma for the rest of the week to spend time with family and friends. Heading back to Tulsa is always special and I love that I get to spend time with my Poppy. He is always up to date on what is going on, in fact he reads my blogs! This spring break will have a great ending because everyone from Seattle is coming in for Seth's wedding! Since I was teaching last summer I was unable to go attend the family reunion so I will finally get to see quite a few people that I have not seen since I went to Seattle when I was 15!!! So since 15, I would have to say a lot has changed since then... well lets see got a license, graduated high school, moved to Texas, turned 21, graduated college, moved to Missouri, completed my Masters, and now have moved back to Texas... So you can understand why I am excited to see everyone... Plus the last time I saw a lot of these people I had braces and a perm!!! So I am really looking forward to seeing everyone and having a great Spring Break!!! I will leave you with a picture of my grandparents and mom at one of there family reunions! Better get back to readings and preparing for tomorrow!