The invitation indicated the event started with networking at 5:30 pm. The presentation was scheduled to begin at 6:00 pm. As usual, I arrived early, as did many others. People were already gathering in the lobby when I arrived at 5:20. They sat on fluffy square chairs in a small area, ignoring each other, looking at their phones. Networking in the new age.
Like any practicing introvert, I found a corner and wandered to it. An older woman with wild dark hair joined me.“Hi, what do you teach?” she asked.
“I teach a business course for artists,” I replied, stammering a little. “How about you?”
“I teach juggling.”
Intrigued, I asked her some questions. Soon we were discussing the amazing activity of juggling—how it's mostly men who want to learn to juggle but kids like it too, how women think they won't be any good at it so they don't try, how she does no promotion, how enthusiasts hold juggling festivals and associations all over the world, how tens of thousands of members juggle socially here in the local Portland juggling community, how Reed College has had a juggling class for thirty years... I was, like, how come I've never heard of this?
“Have you considered creating a juggling class just for women?” I asked.
“I don't do any marketing, I don't know how,” she said.
“Maybe you should take my class!” I laughed, dead serious.
“Maybe you should take mine!” Bam. She got me back.
The assembled group trooped into the auditorium. I lost track of the juggler. I found a seat in the back row behind a young woman with fluffy dark hair. What is it with all these frizzy coifs, I wondered. My hair is typically five-eighths of an inch long. Tall. Whatever. I of course kept my hat on the entire evening, decorated tastefully with my adhesive name tag.
“What do you teach?” The young woman turned around to address me. I told her and asked her the same question.
“I give chocolate tasting tours,” she replied.
The director began introducing the program directors and the chocolate expert turned around in her seat to face the front. I looked her up in the course catalog we'd been given with our in-service packet. Ah, there she was, with a photo and everything, a course about chocolate. Wow, who knew.
Soon we exited and joined a line of teachers leading up the stairs. I smelled food. I got in line behind the chocolate woman, who ignored me. Eventually, her conversation partner asked me what I taught. I told him and found out he taught ceramics.
“I sell tea services at the Saturday Market,” he said. “I'm building a place for groups to rent space to have traditional tea ceremonies.”
We got in the buffet line (catered by local eatery Laughing Planet). I grabbed a white china plate and eyeballed the white rice, black beans, and unidentifiable options in the big stainless steel serving dishes. I spread a small corn tortilla on my plate and heaped it with tofu and salad stuff, a few beans, a little bit of rice, a glob of bright green guacamole. I found some small round corn chippy things but ignored the various sauces and salsa.
The in-service agenda required us to take our plates of food to breakout rooms, where we would sit with the teachers from our department and hear the news from our program director. I parted company with the ceramicist and went downstairs to locate my tribe.
Several old (older than me) white men sat eating silently at long tables in a classroom. I sat in the front row near the wall so no one could sneak up on me. A couple guys nodded as I pulled up a chair to the end of the table. I noticed one woman, an older gal with flyaway gray hair.
“This is my first in-service,” I said into awkward silence, “so pardon me if I stare.”
The man sitting nearest me smiled so I asked him what he taught.
“Electrical certification,” he replied, wiping his mouth with a black paper napkin. Everyone else kept eating in silence.
Luckily the program director, Dawn, entered with a colleague, a youngish woman with a ponytail, a neck tattoo, and big teeth. Both women carried plates of food. They sat down in the front, facing the rows of tables.
Dawn asked us to introduce ourselves and say what we taught. She pointed at me. I said my name and stuttered a bit as I tried to explain what I taught: Business course for artists. I always feel like I'm spouting a pathetic fallacy when I put business and artist in the same sentence. Or is it an oxymoron? I don't know. A pathetic oxymoron. Is that a thing? Or is it a laundry detergent? I can never remember. Anyway, we went around the room. A gray-haired man taught a class on how to start a business. Competition, I thought. A bald man taught a class on maximizing social security benefits. A guy with dark skin and an accent taught computer programming classes. The woman and the gray-haired man sitting next to her taught courses based on neuro-linguistic programming.
Two people strolled in late. One was a tiny older woman with dark hair (a twenty-six year veteran teacher), the other a younger man with creamy skin who told a story of being a student and then becoming a teacher. Both taught Spanish. The last person, in the back corner, was an ancient man who taught computer classes, one of which was Excel. I had to be impressed. I used to teach Excel, back in the day. I wonder what version Microsoft is up to now. I'm stuck in amber when it comes to computer programs. I don't even have Windows 10 yet, that's how far behind I am.
Dawn pulled out a notebook, ignoring her plate of food. First, she reminded us that we aren't allowed to promote our own businesses when we are teaching classes for the college. I thought, have I promoted my business? Then I thought, no, artists are not dissertators. No fear. I don't have anything they could buy from me, even if they wanted to. Whew.
After the breakout session, we reconvened in the auditorium for the main event, the keynote speaker. The ceramicist appeared behind me.
“Why are you wearing blue glasses?” he asked. I laughed. As I walked ahead, I was reaching in my bag to switch my up-close glasses for the distance glasses I use for driving.
“What! Now they are green!” he said. I laughed and headed to the back row. He went off in another direction.
I'm familiar with in-services from my almost ten years as an instructor at a career college. The next hour was as dreary and useless as any in-service in which the speaker fails to take time to identify the needs of the audience. The topic was student engagement. I don't know why the directors chose that topic for a Community Education in-service—students who sign up for Community Education courses want to be there. They receive no credit, no grades. They really want to learn the material. Engagement is not a problem. Like a good student, however, I gleaned what I could from the talk.
The speaker was a solidly built white woman with long hair that might have been blonde, might have been gray, hard to tell under the lights. She wore a light-colored sack-like dress printed with dots or flowers. The overall impression was white, very white. She started talking about the human brain and what keeps us from engaging. She said “right?” after almost every sentence. And she laughed. A lot. I started tracking how many times she laughed at something she said. In the first fifteen minutes, I counted sixteen times she laughed for no obvious reason. I thought, wow, she sure knows how to keep herself entertained. I stopped tracking after that and started drawing in my notebook. I looked at my neighbor two seats to my right and noticed he was drawing, too. Better than me. Clearly, an artist.
I endured to the end, including the fifteen minute award ceremony given to recognize teachers with five, ten, fifteen, and more than fifteen years of service to the college. I thought, it's unlikely I will be receiving one of those awards.
As I drove home, hunched over the wheel, peering into the dark, I thought about some things. I realized I liked meeting new people. I enjoyed hearing their stories. I liked finding out that I'm part of a larger community. I liked seeing how many creative people are sharing their knowledge and expertise. Maybe I'm not the rabid introvert I thought I was.
Today, my world narrows back to normal. Blog, laundry, lunch. I had one night off from daughter duty. In about an hour, I'll be back on the job.
