Day 359

Well, the last 24 hours have certainly been interesting. Last night around 12:30, my phone went off with a tornado warning. I didn't think much of it, but about 25 minutes later, the hotel staff announced that everyone needed to report to the stairwell and get to the lowest level possible. My room is on the 14th floor, and I had to go down quite a few stairs.

The warning ended a little after 1:00, and we were allowed to return to our rooms. Once we made it upstairs, Susan and I started scrolling through the #ACPA20 tweets on Twitter, which were entertaining. Our favorites were the ones about how people trained in crisis response reacted in an emergency when they weren't corraling students. (Turns out we all stayed relatively calm and followed the instructions.) Soon, we learned that a tornado had touched down in Nashville. Woah.

Throughout today, we followed updates on the destruction and the casualties caused by the storm. I'm still not sure I have grasped the events of last night. Everything happened so quickly, and I certainly hadn't expected anything more than some rain while I visited Nashville. It's unreal that we were so close to the tornado and didn't even know it happened. I'm so thankful that our conference delegation stayed safe, but the tornado impacted many lives last night. I have been impressed with ACPA's response to help guests in the city make a positive contribution to recover from this crisis, and I am looking forward to doing my part.

I made Susan's Instagram story!

Something that made today great: My paper presentation went well, and the other papers in my session were awesome!
Time I woke up: 6:15 am