When people ask me what I enjoy most about my job, I usually tell that them it’s the daily and varied intellectual challenges I have to overcome. I like to problem solve and come up with creative ways to collect and disseminate information, whether that is through the education I help develop as part of my full-time role (ie, not CMEpalooza) or through what we do with our CMEpalooza blog and twice-annual extravaganzas. I get to work with smart people (yes, even you Derek) who push me to be the best version of myself and not take shortcuts just to “get things done.” Whether I want to or not, I am constantly learning and being forced to engage my brain on a daily basis.

But here is the problem: All of this can be mentally draining. Inevitably, I find myself running out of gas at about the halfway point of every year. I find every excuse to step away from my desk (“It’s nice outside. I should go for a walk to recharge my batteries. I promise to think about work while I’m traipsing around the neighborhood. Yeah, yeah, that’s it.”) and even when I am in my home office, I am not super productive or creative. The quality of my work suffers, which makes me grumpier than usual around the house. I’m just burnt.

Of course, we all know the solution to these issues: Summer vacation!

Every year, I hear stories about people’s international colleagues who are “sooo sooo lucky” that they set their OOO message to “I’ll be gone for the next 4 weeks. I don’t know and I don’t care who you contact in my absence, as long as it’s not me. Byeeeee!”

We all know that isn’t the way things work in the United States. First of all, many of us don’t get a month’s work of vacation days annually, and even if we do, they often have to be spread out throughout the year for our mental well-being. I was watching a rerun of The Office last week, and there was this great quote from Pam that summed things up well: “I get 10 vacation days a year, and I try to hold off taking them for as long as possible. And this year I got to… the third week in January.”

I hear you, Pam. I hear you.

That said, I am one of the multitude of Americans that takes my lengthiest vacation of the year with my family in the summertime. We did 2 weeks in Italy last year, which was frankly too much for me. I was getting extremely antsy to get home on the last few days, so I convinced my wife and son that 10 days would be our family sweet spot moving forward.

There is a ton of research focused on the restorative value of vacations. I won’t bore you with the details, but essentially, study after study has shown that taking a break from the daily grind — be it 3 days or 3 weeks — and going somewhere that isn’t your house can have substantial short-term benefits on work productivity and attentiveness. Some people will opt to sit on the beach for a week. Others will hike and camp in the wilderness. Others will drive a few hours to visit family and just sit around eating and drinking. Personally, I like seeing new cities, learning about their history and culture, and eating well. I learned in my 20s not to try to jam too much into a summer vacation, so our current vacation schedule usually involves one activity per day (ie, historic walking tour, hiking/kayaking/something else active, or something unique to the region) with plenty of downtime surrounding everything. Eventually, everyone figures out what works for them during vacation time — this is what works for us.

As you may have read in Derek’s most recent blog post, we spent our summer vacation in Sweden this year in late July-early August. From a vacation destination, it was a good trip. Not a great trip, but a good trip. The cities were clean, the downtown areas were very walkable, but the weather was extremely variable (cloudless and sunny at 9 am, ominous and rainy at 11 am was a normal day) and we had one tour guide who cancelled on us 15 minutes before we were supposed to meet because he “wasn’t feeling well” (the tour started at 2 pm and you just now are not feeling well? I’m not buying it, Ulf) (note from Derek: uh oh, bad news for Ulf. He’s definitely going to get a sternly worded Yelp review now.).

Regardless of our summer destination, I have a fairly predictable vacation routine from a work perspective. Since I am always the first person awake in our family, I’ll usually log onto my email while the others are sleeping and spend up to an hour addressing anything urgent. Basically, I’m just dealing with small details that don’t require a lot of mental acuity (so yes, no blog posts – sorry). I know that a lot of “experts,” as well as our European colleagues, suggest a total unplug from work, but my approach is what works best for me — I don’t have to worry that anything urgent is being unknowingly overlooked but I’m also not having to fully mentally engage. Plus, my inbox is fairly clean so I don’t have to worry about coming home to a lot of nonsense.

And you know what? By about day 5 of our recent trip, I started to feel intellectually unstuck. I actually jotted down a few ideas for future CMEpalooza blog posts so I’m not dreading the “Uh oh, what should I write about this week?” feeling that hit me earlier in the summer. I actually found myself looking forward to getting back into the rhythms of work.

Studies show that the mental and emotional restorative impact of vacations lasts about 3 weeks. I’ve been home now for 5 days. My wife will be glad to know I won’t be my usual grumpy self for a little bit longer.

Last week, I received an email from Scott informing me that he wrote up a blog post to let everyone know that we are doing CMEpalooza Trivia Night (again) at the Alliance Industry Summit (AIS). This was very generous of him to do, considering he is currently on vacation…somewhere (He told me where, but I don’t remember. Probably somewhere very expensive and glamorous like Monte Carlo or Bora Bora. Here’s a picture he sent me of him contemplating what to write for the blog):

(NOTE FROM SCOTT: We are in Sweden for 10 days – half in Stockholm, half in Gothenburg. If anyone wants to meet up to rag on Derek while I’m here, hit me up)

Despite being in vacation mode, he managed to crank out a very nice 1,500-word blog post about the importance of educators making a personal connection with unwilling learners. My only complaint is that readers had to scroll through nine paragraphs and 1,200 words before reaching the first mention of CMEpalooza Trivia Night. I’m flattered by the number of subscribers the CMEpalooza blog has (now well over 1,000), but I’m not enough of a blowhard to think that all of you read every single word we write. So, I’d like to reintroduce CMEpalooza Trivia Night just to make sure more of you are aware of it.

Here are the key details:

• WHAT: CMEpalooza Trivia Night
• WHEN: During AIS from 6-7:30 pm on Tuesday, Sept. 9
• WHERE: Hilton at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia (same location as AIS)
• WHY: Because it’s fun!,
• HOW: This is an excellent question. Typically for our trivia events we have five rounds of 5 questions. The first four questions of each round will be related to the theme of that round and the last question of each round will be a pop culture question.

Here is a general breakdown of the types of questions you will encounter during CMEpalooza Trivia Night (subject to change, etc., etc.):

Rounds 1, 2, and 4: Questions from AIS days 1 & 2. We try to create one question from each session from the first two days of AIS. If you are presenting on either of these days, we might be reaching out to you for help with developing a question from your session. As an example, this is one of the questions from last year’s CMEpalooza Trivia Night (I’ll put the answers at the very end.)

Which of the following was NOT mentioned by today’s Outcomes Panel as a way to leverage outcomes to showcase the value of medical education to your organization?

1. Develop a social media campaign
2. Have a poster gallery day
3. Create quarterly infographic outcomes reports
4. Present outcomes to internal stakeholders

Round 3: This is a special round dedicated to our sponsor for the evening, AcademicCME. All questions for this round will feature AcademicCME or AcademicCME-adjacent trivia. For example:

AcademicCME’s Tim Hayes and family vacation every summer in Ocean City, NJ. Which of the following “facts” about OCNJ is true?

1. It is the marlin fishing capital of the world
2. The city bylaws include a prohibition on painting any house within city limits purple
3. It is a “dry town,” prohibiting the sale of any alcohol within city limits
4. It is the birthplace of singer Frankie Avalon

Round 5: CME Wildcard! (I used an exclamation mark to make it sound more exciting!) This section will consist of general questions related to CME, AIS, the Alliance and/or the ACCME. Here is an example from last year:

Which one of the following does the Alliance suggest as a way to celebrate Healthcare Education Professionals Day?

1. Host an awards ceremony
2. Send out cards or e-cards
3. Give an extra day off
4. Make a large cash donation to CMEpalooza

Pop Culture Questions: As I mentioned previously, the last question of each round will be a pop culture question. We’re using “pop culture” as a bit of a catch-all term here. It basically means questions on any topic other than CME or AIS. It could be anything from TV shows to movies to history to sports to whatever. Since AIS is in our hometown, there’s a more than likely chance that these questions will have a Philly slant to them. Here is an example from last year:

Daryl Hall and John Oates, the founding members of Hall & Oates, met while attending which university?

1. Penn
2. Drexel
3. Villanova
4. Temple

Now that you know all about CMEpalooza Trivia Night, make your plans now to join us. There will be snacks. There will be prizes. We’ll be done in time for you to make your dinner reservation. See you in September!

ANSWER KEY: Correct answers in GREEN

Which of the following was NOT mentioned by today’s Outcomes Panel as a way to leverage outcomes to showcase the value of medical education to your organization?

1. Develop a social media campaign 
2. Have a poster gallery day
3. Create quarterly infographic outcomes reports
4. Present outcomes to internal stakeholders

AcademicCME’s Tim Hayes and family vacation every summer in Ocean City, NJ. Which of the following “facts” about OCNJ is true?

1. It is the marlin fishing capital of the world
2. The city bylaws include a prohibition on painting any house within city limits purple
3. It is a “dry town,” prohibiting the sale of any alcohol within city limits
4. It is the birthplace of singer Frankie Avalon

Which one of the following does the Alliance suggest as a way to celebrate Healthcare Education Professionals Day?

1. Host an awards ceremony
2. Send out cards or e-cards
3. Give an extra day off
4. Make a large cash donation to CMEpalooza

Daryl Hall and John Oates, the founding members of Hall & Oates, met while attending which university?

1. Penn
2. Drexel
3. Villanova
4. Temple

For most of the last 25 summers, I have volunteered as a tour guide in the historic district of Philadelphia as part of the Independence Historical Trust’s Twilight Tour program. I started doing it in my much younger days as a way to get out and do something different upon my move back East following the fizzling out of my newspaper career. While I’m not as introverted as Derek (or at least, I wasn’t back then), being in the spotlight isn’t necessarily something that comes naturally to me, so leading these historical tours has been a good way to do something that makes me uncomfortable. Yes, there are still times when I’m walking to the start of the tour and quietly wishing, “Please don’t let anyone show up tonight so I can just go home without having to talk to anyone,” but yet, once I get going, I’m usually OK.

Over the years, I have developed a number of ways to connect with a fairly diverse audience. Many weeks, the audience will include foreigners who know nothing about the founding of our country (sadly, many Americans fall into this boat too), kids who are being dragged along by mom and dad, visitors who are only there because they have an hour to kill and the buildings are all closed for the day, and everything in between. I’ve managed to strike up conversations with all kinds of interesting people from interesting places, and can confidently say my life would be very, very different if I hadn’t taken up the challenge of being a tour guide in the first place (it’s where I met my wife – not the “Meet Cute”  story you hear every day).

We’re a little more than halfway through the current touring season. The tours run every night from mid-May through the middle of September – I will typically do one tour a week. By now, I have my script down pretty cold. Year after year, I walk the same route through the park, tell a lot of the same stories, and rely on a lot of the same jokes (“I would tell you about all that the state of New Jersey contributed to the history of our great nation… but I wouldn’t want to waste 30 seconds of your time” works week after week, year after year) (note from Derek: I laughed.) I’ll throw in a few new tidbits that I’ve learned each year just to keep myself engaged, but I would bet 75% of the material I share today is the same material I started with 25 years ago. History is history after all – people, places, and dates don’t change.

After doing these tours for so long, you’d think that every week would be more or less the same, but that is absolutely not true. Every group that comes along with me has a different vibe. Sometimes, things come easily – I get into a good rhythm with my storytelling, I know the answers to the questions people ask, and I can see on the faces of my audience that they are paying attention and seem interested in what I am saying (this is the best feeling of all). But then there are the weeks when I lose people, either because it’s too hot, they are too tired, or I am just boring them to death (this is the worst feeling of all).

Let me briefly illustrate.

THE BAD: I had one tour in early June that was perhaps my worst in a decade. There was only one woman who showed up – she was a librarian from Puerto Rico who didn’t speak or understand much English (and she was wearing a mask, so I could barely hear what she was trying to say). Since my Spanish petered out in high school, I was stuck trying my best to share information with her in English that she may or may not have understood, about a topic she may or may not have cared anything about. I could tell about 10 minutes in that she wanted to leave, but she probably felt bad because no one else had shown up for the evening. So, we both persevered as we walked through the park for an hour. I did my best to keep up appearances, but I skipped certain anecdotes and probably got some names and dates wrong because I just wanted to be done with it. I have actually given some really good tours to group of 1 or 2 people over the years — this happens maybe once or twice each summer – but this one was just awful. I was admittedly a bit dejected afterward.

THE GOOD: Let’s contrast this with last week’s tour, where amongst about a dozen or so people on the tour was a family from Los Angeles. They were on their way home from a 6-week whirlwind trip throughout Asia and Europe and had taken an Uber into Philadelphia during a 5-hour layover because they wanted to “do something besides just sit in the airport.”  Well, mom and dad wanted to do something. Their 10-year-old daughter looked exhausted and was totally disinterested at the start of the tour. I usually don’t engage much with family members who seem like they are being dragged along, but since it wasn’t a large tour group, I made an effort early on to connect with this girl. I don’t even remember how it started – I asked her some question about someone’s name and she guessed with clear disinterest, “John.” Well, the answer wasn’t John. But wouldn’t you know, there was someone named John at my next stop that I talked about (hatmaker John Thompson), and then another John right around the corner (Commodore John Barry), and then another (Colonel John Nixon), and then another (John Todd), and another (John Adams). Every time I came to a story about one of these men, I paused to let this girl tell everyone what their first name absolutely, positively had to be. She seemed mildly amused the first time this happened, but then she started to get excited. By the second or third “John” story, I had managed to hook this girl who only wanted to go home 20 minutes ago in a completely unplanned and unrehearsed manner. I eventually ran out of Johns to talk about, but the whole group had a good laugh when I cued up my comedy partner near the end of the tour and gave her the Family Feud buzzer when, alas, my story was about Bishop William White. When the tour was over, she came up and shook my hand before hopping into an Uber to head back to the airport. “That was fun,” she said. It’s one of my favorite compliments I’ve ever had.

In the CME world, we are all educators. If you’ve been in this field for any length of time, you’ve seen faculty who are able to make connections with their audience and those who simply fall flat. The materials undoubtedly matter, but you can give two faculty an identical slide deck with the same data and see very different results. Heck, I have seen the very same faculty with the very same educational materials give presentations on consecutive evenings and witness wildly different levels of interest. Sometimes, you just get an audience of “librarians from Puerto Rico” who are only there for the free food or because they need the credits. They are impossible to engage. Sometimes, you get people who really, truly want to learn and who come with lots of really good questions. They are easy to engage. But then sometimes you get those people who are there after a long day at work and need that hook to bring them into the education. If you can find faculty who are able to reel those sorts of people in, those are the ones who you want to invite back again.

A CMEpalooza side note: On my historic tours, my unique schtick is that I ask trivia questions and give away money for the correct answers. Because Derek and I also like trivia and giving away money, we debuted CMEpalooza Trivia night last September during the Alliance Industry Summit (AIS). Since the first year was so much fun, we were invited by the AIS powers-that-be to bring it back in 2025. We’re happy to announce that Year 2 of CMEpalooza Trivia Night will be happening from 6-7:30 pm on Tuesday, Sept. 9, at the Hilton at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia. There will be trivia (some CME related, some not), some prizes ($500 up for grabs), and perhaps a few jokes as well. More details coming later, but if you are going to be at AIS (or if you live nearby and want to sneak in – shh, we won’t tell), please come join us. Lastly, a huge thank you to our friends at AcademicCME for sponsoring this year’s CMEpalooza Trivia night!