National Symposium on Healthcare Interpreting/Region III

I have been invited to speak at both a national healthcare interpreting symposium and a regional conference. It will be a particularly busy week: I'm on the agenda 3 of the 7 days, sometimes presenting alone, sometimes as a co-presenter. I'm kinda shitting my pants because I've been asked to co-present one of the plenary sessions at the healthcare symposium. A huge honor, but more than a little nerve-wracking as well. Additionally I've been asked to participate on a panel for the local interperter training program while I'm there, as well as been accepted to be a working interpreter during the healthcare symposium. It's going to be an amazing week! A bit schizophrenic with all the hats I'll be wearing.

I'm excited because I'll be going back to a great city where I did some of my training; the interpreting and D/deaf communities are amazing; I'll get to see colleagues whom I've not seen for some time. I'm particularly excited (and nervous!!) because I'll not only get to have some great social time, but I will have the ginourmous privilege and honor of working side-by-side with people who trained me, being on the agenda with individuals recognized as national experts in my specialty, and just being in this environment for a week.

When I started in this field, I never would have imagined I'd be doing even half of what I'm doing now. I didn't start out wanting to teach, consult, present... I just wanted to be a good interpreter. I by no means think I'm anywhere near the cream of the crop and I feel like I have so much still to learn and develop. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be included all that I'm doing currently. It sort of makes my head spin, and I very much feel entirely out of place; I keep waiting for people to find out that I'm masquerading as someone that I am not, and that I don't deserve to be sitting at the big peoples' table.

I remember when I started interpreting, I looked at people who were nearly 20 years in to the field and thought "Wow...I can't imagine doing any of that." It just is a huge trip to think that I am the new them, doing all of the thats that I never used to imagine doing. I am now one of those people who have been around this field for nearly 20 years, the new generation of instructor, presenter, trainer, mentor... I am becoming what those people were to me and I feel like I'm falling so terribly painfully short of some benchmark.

And I still want is to be a decent interpreter, someone who feels that I should be better than what I am.