A lazy Saturday ahead, most of the people in town took to making something more of it. As I walked into school, students were cleaning up the rooms, farming out in the fields, and playing female-dominated games of volleyball and soccer.
I arrived 5 minutes late, by my quite anal standards, well before the other professors. Laurenco was there, however, and we talked briefly. I noticed that I had forgotten to shave. Shit.
This would have been inconsequential, but this wasn't any old 2-week planning meeting. I was to present the HIV/AIDS curriculum I had just drawn up and was working on planning out in detail. I told myself it was no big deal because I look pretty weird anyway, and a 5 o'clock shadow...
I walked in and took a seat next to a distant (in the mental sense) colleague who teaches biology as well. She had helped Tober in his time here, and was supposed to have been helping me plan lessons. But I hadn't seen her yet during the trimester. And I needed to struggle with the lessons on my own.
So all told, I had spent not more than a few minutes around her. She started to ask me, as the planning session began, how my lessons have been going. She asked specifically if I had had the students draw the diagram of the mitochondria, a part of the cell.
At about this time, another professor came in to make a total of about 12 of us. He sat alone, talking loudly to nobody in particular. I didn't understand, but he seemed to be cracking a couple good jokes. I smiled along with the others, as I've taken to doing when I don't quite understand. I figure, at the very least, it's pretty funny that I don't even get it.
So I responded to my colleague that I hadn't had them draw specifically that drawing, but that they knew the important structures from other drawings and the notes I gave them.
I didn't get that much out before I was in a verbal battle over whether I should have the students draw EVERY drawing, fueled by her belligerence. I was fairly taken aback by this, wondering if this was something Tober dealt with well, or maybe I was just teaching completely incorrectly.
I argued that the drawings in our book and on the exam won't be the same, so it helps to see the structures, but not to memorize them or they won't understand the structures. I thought I had laid out a pretty good argument, but it was obvious that the line was firm - I needed to give every single drawing.
And just as I started to repeat my argument, she - to this point, uncharacteristically - sat back and smiled. It was a bizarre smile, and it took a couple seconds to realize that she was drunk.
Plastered.
I looked in her eyes and found in response black and brown circles trying very hard to find every single object, albeit slowly.
I gave up my argument, conceding that I would draw the diagrams for my students, and getting to work. It dawned on me that she was not alone, as the professor who sat alone was staring off into space. The lack of telltale smells of alcohol made me wonder if they were stoned, but she was being far too argumentative.
It was announced soon after that that the bank was coming to make a presentation. My colleague struggled to move her desk to the front of the room, nearly mowing down an oblivious pedagogical director.
About a minute into the presentation, I realized they were making a pitch for life insurance, through the bank. They gave us some paperwork and age-specific rates for policies of 1-4000 US dollars.
One of the presenters I happen to know from around town, and he's a very quiet, gentle man. Obviously, he was interested in the commission - he has a full family to support - but had very little experience pitching life insurance. And a room full of the most educated people in town is pretty intimidating. I know how important eye contact is, so I made sure I was looking at him when his partner handed things over to him. Apparently, I was the only one, because we held a pretty uncomfortable gaze for the duration of his talk, but I knew it was helping him. And I was probably the only one in there who already HAD life insurance.
Doing some quick math, I figured out that all the numbers were hoping people made it to 52 years old - that was the average age at which the premium was paid off. As the life expectancy is lower than that, they were obviously targeting a richer crowd - a crowd that didn't have as immediate a need for life insurance. But I couldn't argue that it was a bad thing. The burden on a family that has just lost a significant source of income here is devastating.
There was a very distant, silly question, revealing another member of the drinking group. It became quickly obvious that this week was not the time to try and rally support for HIV/AIDS advocates.
When it came to the open forum part of the meeting, either Laurenco forgot or felt the same way, and I promised myself to bring it up next week.
And for the second planning meeting in a row, an announcement of a professor's sibling's death closed matters.
I definitely don't know their pain, so I can't begin to judge their drinking patterns. But those drunken eyes were not happy ones.
Peace
John
