Miami Day 3: Sick.

This is long overdue as the last day of AP-LS was last Saturday but it went by in a blur and once I got back to El Paso I was horridly sick.

I woke up on Saturday morning and knew immediately that I was sick. No warning other than an inflamed soft pallet but for me that's the beginning of the end. And I was right. I deteriorated for the rest of the day. Me and a few of the girls had decided to just go balls to the wall and stay out all night and drink and live it up on our last night and I had to buy drugs from the hotel convenience store as soon as we got out of the taxi.

But I managed to hang in for the entire last day of the conference and I actually saw some of my favorite talks and I'm so glad I was there. Still.

We got up early, again, and I went to a talk on juror decision making about forensic science which I actually found pretty fascinating. I'm taking a class right now that deals a lot with forensic evidence and even though I don't care about jury decision making it was really interesting. A lot of this discussion in the past couple of years has been focused on the CSI effect which is this idea that so many people watch CSI, Law and Order, Bones, all those cop dramas, that their views of police procedure and court processes are effected and if what happens in their experience in the courtroom does not mirror what they've seen in the show are they more likely to acquit defendants in lieu of that evidence, but study after study suggests this does not exist for jurors.

Second up, was the ANZAPPL (say that exactly as you see it: Ann-Zap-ple) Presidential Plenary which was interesting because they brought in international experts in a bunch of areas to assess a sexual harassment case from New Zealand and I found it quite interesting. The case was pretty basic, but the different issues they brought up, for example, there were two attorneys experts for the defense and prosecution, a victimology expert, an expert on retrospective decision making, among others, it was really unique and I liked it because all these issues should at one time or another be discussed and to see it all interacting, all at once was really great.

One thing I really liked about this conference were the coffee breaks. Twice a day there was a coffee break, where the hotel provided free coffee and tea and pastries and it was always wonderful. It was nice to have the opportunity to take a break, stand, have coffee, eat free food, do some networking, it was just a nice way to break up the day.

I went to a Sexual Offending seminar which was really all over the place, but that's quite representative of sexual offending research. In some fields you see much of the same kinds of studies, in sexual offending it's so varied. The first talk was on classifying child molesters, the second was on base rates, age of first exposure and deviant pornography use among college students and sex offenders--it was way more involved than he could squash into a 15 minute talk and I found him at the coffee break where he told me that guys in his sample were admitting to collecting porn like baseball cards; having collections in numbers upwards of 10, 000!!! I can't even imagine that, but porn isn't my thing. The third paper was on sexually violent predators and recidivism, where the fourth investigates offense location as being able to inform policy, an issue that's very important when considering residential bans for offenders, and the last assessed deviance in response to sexual fantasies. It was so all over the place that I'm not sure how they all ended up together aside from the fact that they all studied something to do with sex. But I was also completely fading at this point. It was hard for me to stay awake.

Vicki and I went to lunch after that; the night before we had found that sushi place and decided to go back. I'm a total hypochondriac and I started to panic thinking we'd totally pull a Piven and get mercury poisoning from eating sushi twice in such a short period of time. But we were fine. And we had fun. It was so great to get away from the hotel, away from the conference, to something else. And we weren't sick. Of course we weren't.

Immediately after though, I ran to another talk. It was on juvenile justice, and I don't care aside from the fact that eventually juvenile's grow up into adults, but ick. I don't do work with juveniles. But I had met Ed Mulvey the night before and he was part of this talk so I wanted to put in some face time. This actually turned out to be really interesting, because two authors wrote a book on a new model for juvenile justice that critiques the current punishment model, and Ed and a few other researchers critiqued the book and had an open discussion and it was fairly civilized, but definitely heated. I. LOVED. IT. It was just so great to sit back and watch everyone so passionate about their point of view and while some of the comments were uncalled for (oh yeah, the gloves came off), it was clear that everyone there was concerned for the state of the field and the individuals' whose lives are decided by it.

Then I went to the second session of Interpersonal Violence research where I heard probably my favorite talk of the entire conference. Unfortunately, it was from a Swedish researcher and while it was completely fascinating and I'm intrigued, there's not a lot I can do with Swedish data. A basic review of how research works for those of you who aren't aware, when you do research you report results from a sample and infer your results back to a population. Swedish samples can only be inferred back to a Swedish population. But it was still completely brilliant! For whatever reason, and I hope they figure it out because I am so interested!!!, Sweden has the highest rate of reported rape in the world.

I KNOW!

How?! Because there's more rape, because it's less accepted, because there's more belief in the police response to victims, what is happening?! I LOVE IT!!!

And Stephen Hart spoke. I had a moment. A big nerdy Psychology moment. I LOVE Stephen Hart! I've been reading his research since I started writing about domestic violence and sexual offending and he is a total rock star. Some woman came into the talk late and made me move my drink even though there were empty seats everywhere. Now, Hart was listed first but he was chairing the session and went last, so one of the other presenters was going first and this lady leaned over and asked me where he was and did the chair announce that they weren't going to be there and then huffed and left while Stephen Hart was sitting literally, right in front of her.

Jennifer chaired the Corrections seminar so I went to that and it was not well attended which sucked. As she describes it, her time slot was the graduate students dream. Saturday afternoon, in Miami, no one's going to come, so no one's going to ask questions. But for someone who actually wants their research to be heard, it's a horrible time slot. I've heard this talk before, but she did really well and I'm so glad that I was able to see it.

I was going to skip the last session of the night but decided, what the heck, it's the last one so I went to a symposium on Statutory Rape and Sex Abuse Registries and it was so fantastic!! There is some fantastic work coming out of the University of Virginia and the University of Illinois at Chicago and I cannot believe how insane these registry rules are. It's really tragic I think, and I would encourage you all to educate yourselves just for your protection. What you don't know really can hurt you and I'm just amazed at the state of our country. We would rather register everyone as a sex offender rather than talk to our children about sex??! It's completely mind boggling! I had no idea that it was illegal for two teenagers to have sex with each other in some states. NO IDEA! I just cannot even believe how ridiculous some of these rules are, but mostly at how uneducated people are, myself included. This was definitely the most eye opening and inspiring session I was at for the entire conference.

Afterwards a few of us took a bus down to South Beach. To Lincoln Road. Yeah.

That place.

It was like the Strip in Vegas without the casinos, Jennifer thought it was a bit trashier, but there was no active advertising of prostitutes so point 1 Lincoln.

We had a really nice dinner at an Italian restaurant and walked around all the shops. There's a huge Ghirardelli Chocolate store that gives out free samples; Amy dropped hers as soon as she unwrapped it and I was telling her to just pick it up as some guy stepped on it. Awesome.

We went into this huge souvenir store where I bought my standard shot glass, fridge magnet, and a gift for my Mom. The girls then decided they wanted to go to a hookah bar and I was done. Not only do I never smoke anything, I was exhausted and felt like crap so I took one for the team and took our awful travel companion back to the hotel with me so the others could have some fun and packed up for the trip home.

Vicki and I got up at 6 to get to the airport on time--my plane left at 8:30, hers at 10:30.

Long story short, I hate American Airlines. Worst experience of my life, and traveling sucks. It just does. And I know it. And I'm an experienced flier. So if I say I hate American Airlines, you know it was bad. And it was bad; to the point where I still need to edit my opinions to avoid being put on the no fly list or arrested.

And have been sick ever since. Monday and Tuesday I had the flu, cough and cold, plus fever, so I stayed home but was back at it on Wednesday. But it's Spring Break now, and I'm feeling better. I should be all cleared up by the end of the week.

But I made it. I made it home, but more importantly, I made it through my first grown up, big kid, professional, conference.

And loved it.

Next year, I'll be presenting a paper. It's not really an option. Aside from the fact that Jennifer told me to be ready for it, I decided for myself as soon as I saw the first talk. This is what I do.

I can't wait.

AP-LS 2012, Puerto Rico, prepare yourself for myself.