After the conference was the cleanup. On Friday, we had a 2-hour meeting before lunch on some of the good aspects of the conference and the challenges that we might have faced at the conference. At the meeting, one of our staff who was organizing the meeting had a creative idea of using materials as metaphors and symbolism to summarize our experience at the conference (and overall at the UBC Learning Exchange). We each did this by taking an item of different kinds from the basket. Each item meant something different and unique for each of us at the conference. For instance, one colleague took a key from the basket. To her, the key is a metaphor for opportunities in discovering our potentials. We, as a team at the Learning Exchange, is opening doors to many wonderful opportunities for everyone in the community. At the same time, we ourselves are opening doors and discovering our own potentials and exciting opportunities working here. This analogy resonates with me the most, and I truly believe that I am opening and finding my strengths and weaknesses.

My overall thought of the conference is that it was inspiring, motivational, engaging, fun, well planned out but with bumps here and there along the way. After the conference, I now realized the true meaning of “Learning Exchange”. We are constantly sharing, exploring and learning and new ideas with others; even little things such as how to sew a button or make a badge are just equally valuable and important.

For next week, we have planned out what our week will be like! Our final report will due on Thursday.