backyard crowing
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
what was at risk?
I need to get over my hate affair.
Went to an emotional intelligence seminar-y thing with a leader and two attendees. It was ... interesting?
The most emotionally intellligent person there was a guy named M. The leader's name was X.
M asked me a great question about my problematic professor when he (the prof) would ask a question of our class: "What was at risk?" Beautiful question, and he looked me right in the eye as he spoke it.
X promptly told him to follow the empathy script, as if that's a real thing.
So I thought about it tonight.
When answering the professor's questions: "What was at risk?"
1. My self-worth.
2. My appearances in front of others as classmates and friends.
3. My appearances in front of others as potential future job opportunities.
4. My authenticity - since answering his questions authentically wasn't really possible. Even if I thought I knew the answer, I wouldn't agree with that answer, because we had very different ideas about editing. So I would either get the question wrong and be authentic, or get it right and feel a hole in my chest.
5. My ability to keep my composure, since I often wanted to talk back or storm out of the classroom
Those were the risks of speaking up. Anytime a question was asked, I had FIVE reasons to shut my mouth. That's tremendous...
Additionally, I had two other discoveries:
1. First, take a girl who deeply cares about this class. Add in a sprinkle of her needing positive verbal reinforcement to feel good about herself. Sprinkle with professor who never says anything positive about anything. 1 + 1 + 1 = Several meltdowns.
Conclusion: it's reasonable that someone in my shoes would find this all quite disturbing. It would be shocking if I DIDN'T have an existential crisis/depressive episode, because the character setup is like a dang reality show.
2. The professor was likely trying to prepare us for what HE considers success -- so: working in LA, working on films, etc. etc. HIS version of success. But in reality, there are many different types of editing room environments. So he's prepping us for where HE wants to go -- not us.
Understanding! Woo!
2:15 am - Friday, Dec. 18, 2015
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|