It’s over. My acclaimed return to the stage of retail (a limited-run engagement) is finished. I’m back in retirement.
Body count: zero. I’m still alive; customers are still alive; no co-workers were harmed during the course of this encore performance.
I learned a lot from this past week. The primary thing, of course, is that I was absolutely right to leave retail. There were other things, too, though, that put a few worries to rest. For example, it confirmed that the reason I left sales after eleven years is completely due to the customers, and not the actual work of running a bookstore. It also confirmed that I enjoy teaching more than working retail (not a surprise, but nice to know). And this week also proved to me that no one resents my departure from the store, and everyone really enjoyed having me back. Okay, so I’m insecure: I was worried about what management and staff really thought of me. You know how you have those sort of acquaintances where you don’t see them for a while and you run into them, and they’re distant and you wonder if you were ever truly friends? I was tremendously afraid people would be distant, proving to me once and for all that I was nobody special. Everyone was thrilled to see me, however, sharing news and making lunch dates, and I frequently heard comments to the tune of, “It’s so good to have you back.”
After work I taught a two-hour introductory survey of divination methods last night, and it went just swimmingly. I knew I was teaching it, of course, and I had all my handwritten notes in a notebook (written on a GO train in July, if I remember correctly), but it didn’t sink in until the end of the day on Wednesday thanks to the chance comment of a client. I realised that I hadn’t truly prepared the class, and as this would be the first time I was teaching it, I needed something a little more substantial than three 5 x 7″ pages of notes. So home I went, weary from a day of work, and spent my anniversary evening in front of the computer while my husband watched TV. My usual practice is to think about the new class for a few days, then sit down the day I am to teach it and type out the scribbled notes that have accumulated over those days of thought. Well, I completely forgot that I was working the day I’d be teaching this new workshop, and that I’d have to do it some other way, which unfortunately ended up with the two of us in separate rooms for two hours, and then falling into bed from exhaustion.
The workshop was a success, however, and I can add it to my roster of classes to offer again. I think perhaps another reason the knowledge that I had to prepare it slipped my mind can be attributed to the fact that my past three or four classes have been cancelled due to lack of registration. It makes sense; September is back-to-school month, and eighty percent of my class attendees are university students, who at this point are still settling in. The last thing on their minds is registering for extracurricular workshops! Looking at the registration book last night, though, I observed that October is already looking better, much to my pleasure.
I find teaching to be an odd experience. So much of it takes place out of the classroom, before the students even get there. When I develop a new workshop, I’m working in a vacuum; other than having a topic that has been generated due to observation of client interest in the store, there’s nothing to indicate the outline at all. I decide the direction, what information to give, what information to discard, the format, the books and web sites to recommend for further research, the exercises, and so forth. Alone at home, out of context, I always create a workshop that seems flat and about half an hour long. In action, though, it always springs to life and ends up pushing the two-hour time frame. The sweetest part, however, is the unsolicited thanks I get from excited students at the end of a class. When I then ask if this is what they were looking for, if it was what they expected when they signed up, inevitably I get an enthusiastic confirmation, and I can breathe a sigh of relief. I always ask if they have any suggestions of information they think I should add, areas we didn’t cover, which I think is an essential part of the teacher-student dynamic. It’s a dialogue, after all; as one of my Liberal Arts professors used to say, pounding his fist on the long table about which twenty of us were sitting, “This is a seminar, not a lecture!” A teacher who doesn’t listen to his/her students is a teacher who will quickly become unpopular and out of touch with the demographic to which s/he is contracted to communicate.
Enough about work. I intended to sleep in this morning, but after a week of getting up early here I am, awake and thinking. At least I’m in bed with my laptop. My plans for the day involve reading books, listening to music while doing nothing much, a bit of sewing, and maybe catching a bus downtown to stop by HMV to pick up a CD that I ordered in June which has finally arrived, and possibly that new shirt that I saw a week or two ago as well. Tonight, the company of good friends at a party; tomorrow, teaching in the morning and the memorial service for Andr�s in the afternoon. And on Sunday, my husband and I will finally be able to appreciate one another’s company and celebrate our wedding anniversary.