Sweet Home Hawaiiabama
By GREG MAFFETT
Published: July 31, 2010
Home again, long enough to do some laundry and catch up with the mail, then off again.
Life went well up north. Had a great coteacher for my first class, I was doing week one of a two week class. These were young contracting interns, the kind of impressionable folks that I can at times make an impression upon. Then the second week I had the grizzled veterans. Folks who I could barely touch. I thought I did well with the young folks. With the older crowd, well, I maybe held my own.
Last day of the second week the teacher from week one asked if I'd come back for graduation. I wanted to, but that was my day to teach. I was about a half hour from wrapping up class and I hear this thumping in the hall. The doors burst open and in comes the prior weeks class to give me a standing ovation. That was my year end bonus-it just happened to show up in July. I was stunned and didn't have the sense to grab my iPhone and make a video of this. It seemed like the kind of thing I'd want proof of, what with me being the fiction writer.
I was certain I'd never get that type of reaction out of the older class. They were too much like me, cynical, sarcastic and the like. At some level, I knew they were once young interns and maybe I could find the lost youth in them somewhere, someday...but no time soon.
After that class I was off to Alabama. I showed up to 100% humidity and 106 degree temps. In California I'm used to doing things in any order I want, run then yoga or vice versa. I picked run first. Came back in 40 minutes later and sat on the sofa in my hotel. At some point I roused to try yoga and saw a perfectly formed imprint of me on the sofa. That was the fluid formerly known as G. Ok, so there was an order here, yoga then run.
Next morning temps were 76 with the same humidity. Another lesson learned. At 100% humidity, there is no difference at all between 76 and 106. I melted again.
Class started as usual, Monday went alright. But Tuesday I had this pile of free floating angst. I knew we were in trouble, but I didn't know why or how bad. I did go to dinner that night and overheard this conversation at a Bar.
Owner: "So you think you'd come in here for Monday Night Football?"
Patron: "I might, but you wouldn't want me here, I'm an Auburn fan"
Owner "Oh lordy, only thing worse than that is if you were an Auburn fan and Democrat"
Well that solved my wardrobe problem, I'd be wearing the University of Alabama colors here. It really was a Red State in both senses.
Wednesday I got interim feedback from the class. My free floating angst found a home on paper. We were not feeling the love here. We needed to shift gears and fast in terms of how we were teaching the class. The co-teacher and I had a brief pow-wow and made a few changes. I ran the show all day Wednesday and the co-teacher took Thursday.
I overheard another conversation in class about how to deliver criticism, the tradition is this, you can say anything you want about another person if you say the right three words at the end. "Bubba is a brain dead, murderous, cretin" will not work. But if you offfer "Bubba is a brain dead, murderous, cretin-bless his heart" then you are fine. Key learning there and a nice tradition.
Come Friday I thought we were doing OK, but still you never know. I wore a red shirt and hoped for the best. The whole class knew the two instructors were on their way to Hawaii, so we could have taken a beating on that alone if they were the type to hold that against us. But that wasn't the vibe I was getting. People seemed to be feeling better about the class, In fact that was one comment I overhead "rough start, but a good finish" So perhaps were had turned the corner. They spent 20 minutes doing the course evals and it seemed like they had a lot to say. I haven't looked at the comments yet, just haven't.
Also...
Anyway, by the time we got to graduation they had seemed perkier, so I tried a different type of graduation. Rather than just hand out the diploma's I tried an idea that I heard from a student in another class. What you do is give out one diploma and then that student pulls out another diploma at random from the pile. The have to say one thing they learned about the that person during the week. I did this because it was a class full of introverted engineers and I thought it might be tough, but also fun. By the time it was done there were a couple of very good one liners issued by some students. And it so happened that one of the extroverts was last and he did get one of the best lines of the day aimed his way.
The class filed out and down to the exit. En route they passed a classroom full of contract interns. The instructor of that class came rushing out to see me and asked 'Are you the instructor of that class?" I nodded. "Could you ask them to keep it down, we are taking a test in here!" I felt bad about that interruption. For about 2 seconds. Until I realized what just happened.It was feeling a lot like home right about then.
I'm off to Hawaii tomorrow, to teach more of these grizzled old guys. Sweet.
Adult Disneyland
By GREG MAFFETT
Published: November 2, 2010
It's not the old Apple, but I still love it.
Any Comments?