TSHA 2010

Here's me with my nose on outside the Ft. Worth Convention Center.  After Patch Adams there was a mad rush for the exhibit hall to get all the freebies at the booths.  Super Duper is a company that makes all sorts of speech games and books and stuff.  They are known to have THE BEST freebies so everyone swarmed their booth.  This year they gave out clipboards with a calculator at the top.  I got one!  It is super cool.  :)  After getting our clipboards, my friend and I made our way around the exhibit hall gathering freebies.  It felt like we should say "Trick or Treat!" or something.  :)  One of the other cool freebies was this booth that would take your picture with their mascot and then give you a framed copy of it.  A group of us got together and had our picture taken.

When we went back to pick up our picture they had printed and framed a copy for each of us!  It was a nice surprise.

I went to some very informative seminars that afternoon, some more then others.

That evening a friends dad treated us all to dinner.  He was unable to join us at the last minute but told us we could go to the restaurant in the hotel and charge it to the room he had gotten for her.  We had soooooo much fun.  Our waiter was great and the company was fantastic.  We laughed and laughed.  Sigh... good times.  :)

The next day, Friday, I got roped into going to a vegan restaurant with my friends.

I have to admit, I ended up getting a PB&J with apple slices so it wasn't too adventurous but the atmosphere was VERY vegan!  :)  As we were checking out we saw this little statue of Jesus standing over the stuffed animals, I guess to prove to us that Jesus wants us to eat vegan.

It reminded us of a funny thing Patch Adams had said.  "Jesus wants you to get off your butt and love people!"

Friday night was the Praxis Bowl.  We have to take a big test at the end of graduate school to prove we know all we need to know to become a Speech Pathologist.  Every year at TSHA schools compete in a game show style competition with questions from that test.  It is called the Praxis Bowl.  Each school picks 4 of their soon to be graduates and they represent the school in the competition.  Our school won last year so we have had this lovely trophy in our student work room as long as I have been attending school here.

Isn't is pretty?! :)  Anyways, we had to bring it to TSHA this year and were hoping to be able to take it back with us again.  Our team got every question except the last one right in the first round.  They advanced to the second round where they got most of the questions right but missed a few.  Our team went into the final round with a 1,300 point lead.

They got the final jeopardy question wrong.

But so did the other team so we still won!!!!  It was so exciting!!!

It was humbling reading the questions for the game because I realized there is still a lot left for me to learn.  Next year it will be someone from my class up there competing.  Probably not me because I would choke under that kind of pressure but I will totally be there cheering them on!

This is a picture of all the students from UNT that attended the Praxis Bowl.  Our winning team is the 4 students in the front holding the trophy.  This picture will be in the official TSHA publication sent to all of the great state of Texas!  We are so cool. :)

After the Praxis Bowl, a classmate had us all over to her home and fed us Chipotle style dinner followed by a rousing game of catch phrase.  We played 3 times and my team lost all 3. My cheeks and abs hurt from all the laughing by the time I left though so the night was a total success.   The food was delicious, the company fantastic, it was the perfect way to end the conference.  I can't wait for TSHA next year, in Houston!