Participant Perspectives

Here's a report from past IFYE, Chris Heggem

Imagine, if you will, your third day on the IFYE speaking tour. You feel prepared and fairly relaxed, since you spent plenty of time last week organizing slides and perfecting your talk, and have had already had few good days talking to small, receptive groups. It is about 9:30 in the morning, and you are 20 minutes early for your school visits..in fact the county agent you are scheduled to meet is not even here yet so you are hanging out in the school parking lot, just sitting in your car and relaxing after the 2 hour drive you made to be here. For you, this combination of preparedness and unhurried arrival are practically unprecedented - so you aren't sure how to feel.

Suddenly, a strange panic hits. Even before knowing exactly what, you realize that something is very, very wrong. You double check the name of the school, the times on the schedule you were sent. Everything checks out. Then it hits you. The Slide Projector. It is heavy, the kind of thing you remember packing around. And that feeling, one of lugging around 10 pounds of awkward ancient slide projector, is not one you have had today. This morning you left early - there was exactly one overloaded trip to the car carrying coffee mug, overnight bag, heavy coat, snowboots, mittens, and a totebag full of cheesy Bulgaria brochures. But no slide projector, which is in all likelihood sitting right next to the door 130 miles away where you put it so it would be remembered.

Too scared to look, you stare forward blankly and try to will that thing into appearing in the back seat. Seconds later, a careful, hopeful examination reveals it is still not there. Not under the coat, not behind the passenger's seat. Your heart drops and you decide that it may be in the trunk. Nope. By now you can recall the fleeting hours-earlier thought that you should take two trips to carry all the stuff to the car. But you didn't, and that means that all your careful preparation of an interesting slide show is completely worthless. The swearing commences.

By now you have about 5 minutes to figure out what to do. Do you drive away and pretend you thought the presentations were tomorrow? Do you call your mother? Do you cry? No, that doesn't seem very helpful. THINK! You lived in a country where you couldn't even speak the language, for God's sake...communication is something you can do. Still, it's hard to concentrate and form a plan when you are so busy yelling at yourself for being this stupid and careless. Shut up, self. In a heroic act of denial, you instead pretend the electricity is out and the slide projector you so carefully packed is completely worthless - instantly shifting the blame from yourself to the power company and freeing up valuable thinking room.

Do you walk in there and pretend that a slide show was never even a consideration for your brand of highly interactive multicultural instruction? Bingo. Hurry up and find that map. Dig out those Bulgarian coins. Brush up on the Cyrillic alphabet. Prepare to dazzle those junior high kids with your enthusiasm and candor. Put on some lipstick and collect yourself, it's just about showtime.

This is true story. The evaluations for that day were excellent, and while it is good to know I can deal with the occasional curveball...you can be damn sure that next time I'm bringing the slide projector.