OK, I'm back and it wasn't so bad. Sorry about the Thursday freak-out, I was just really, really tired and it has been a very, very long time since I was involved in an ACA certification class, and I was really sort of scared that I was jumping back in too fast somehow.
In fact, it was actually lots of fun, as I kept telling myself it was going to be, and not quite as physically exhausting as I was fearing from stories I heard about the last one. Worst part was freezing up on my solo classroom presentation, I'm terrified of standing up & speaking to an audience (I did manage to unfreeze enough to carry on in a very disorganized fashion, but I'd say that was probably my weakest moment of the entire weekend, and there's lots to work on, but on the whole - NOT SO BAD!
Glad things went well.
ReplyDeleteThese hats and clothes don't look half as silly as what some folks were wearing in London on Friday.
"O" my!
ReplyDeleteCongrats for hanging in there! Not easy working full time and keeping up with being an instructor and all the great stuff you are doing for the CG Auxiliary! I wish you all the best.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jean!
ReplyDeleteBoy, was I ever freaking myself out over this one.
I think part of it was that the stories from the last one made it sound like she was pretty hard-core. I should have remembered that none of the storytellers had been through an ICE before - they ARE pretty hard-core by nature, but they are also tons of fun and as far as being physically demanding, Elizabeth and Gordon's was almost exactly on par with the classes I took from Roger & Jan Schumann at Eskape Sea Kayaking and Ray & Margaret Killen at Katabasis.
And actually the funny thing was that part of the reason for the freeze-up on the classroom talk actually may have been because I picked the topic of "Hypothermia". I have learned a LOT about that topic in the process of all those cold-water workshops where TQ & I have been part of the program - part of why I like doing those is because I learn so much from them.
ReplyDeleteThe problem was that I had to give a 15-minute bullet-point presentation with plenty of interaction, and I hadn't thought it through quite clearly enough, and when I suddenly blanked on where I was & where I was trying to go, I ended up trying to convey every piece of information I've learned from the speakers at all of those workshops.
Left my poor students utterly baffled. No good.