NYSANA visits Niagara Falls

I am currently the student representative to the New York State Association of Nurse Anesthetist's Board of Directors (that is a picture of the 2011-2012 board).  The organization, also known as NYSANA, is the professional organization of CRNAs in New York state (where as the AANA, which I lobbied for in DC, is the professional organization of all CRNAs in the US).  How did I end up in this position?  Last year I volunteered to be the Columbia student representative to NYSANA.  I was told that I would basically just be a point person so that when NYSANA had information pertinent to Columbia SRNAs they would email it to me and I would forward it on to my fellow students.  There are four nurse anesthesia programs in the state of New York (including Columbia), each of these schools has a student representative to NYSANA performing the same duty at their respective program.  Well it turns out that the four of us are also on a rotation to have our student rep act as THE student representative to the NYSANA Board of Directors... and guess which program's turn it was?  It is actually pretty cool to see the inner workings of our professional organization, we have a monthly conference call to discuss what is going on in the world of CRNAs in NY (what are we lobbying for? what are we doing about AAs?).  We also have a fall and spring educational meeting which CRNAs from the state can attend lectures at to receive Continuing Education credits (which they will need a certain number of to maintain their professional licensure).  It is a little intimidating to see how much work goes into this - and we are only one state!  These CRNAs volunteer SO MUCH TIME and energy towards protecting our profession, I am glad that they are willing to do this because it would be far too much to ask of most people (including me!).  A few weekends ago we had our spring educational meeting in Niagara Falls, NY: