To the #AERA21 community:

It’s time for us to tell the truth about who the real AERA Helpers are. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧵" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread">

Over the last several days, when the platform fell apart, we watched as you all came to each other’s aid, developed new forms of technological superstition https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧂" title="Salt" aria-label="Emoji: Salt">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💻" title="Computer" aria-label="Emoji: Computer">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🕯" title="Kerze" aria-label="Emoji: Kerze">, and built Zoom links to carry each other to safer ground.

With you, we shared our screens (and our screams). We searched for vanished friends, and we made new ones. And somehow—well, usually—we presented the scholarship we’ve all worked so hard on.

To grad students and first-time presenters, we’re with you. We hope for that every broken link you find, you also find new connections, forged in camaraderie and humor. May you grow those connections the next time you join us.

#AERA21 isn’t over, and we hope you stick around to support each other. But our purpose has been served. Just as an autumn leaf knows when to let go from the branch, so too we know it’s time for us to fade away. Don’t worry. We’ll never be far.

Perhaps one day, in a conference center in San Diego, we’ll make eye contact on the escalators, and a smile of recognition will cross your lips.

Perhaps, when you’re on 2 hours of sleep and you spill coffee on your shirt, a kind stranger will hand you a crumpled napkin, and you’ll know that AERA Helpers is there.

And in the meantime, if you get stuck, remember what you knew to be true all along: the real AERA Helper is in all of us. Hang in there, kittens.

xoxo
AERA Helpers