One of the “most fun” parts of my job is that I often get to work in classrooms that are full of students and have a professor standing up front teaching. You see, because waiting until the room is free would mean that someone would be forced to teach without PowerPoint. And we all know how impossible that would be. For a girl who regularly gets up in front of a real live audience to sing, play guitar and tell embarrassing personal stories… this is actually rather stressful for me.
Perhaps it has something to do with the very real possibility that I might have to bend over in front of an entire class in order to get into a podium.
Or possibly the fact that all technical problems take 3,417% more time to diagnose and repair when you have someone staring at you. Multiply that by an average class size of about 20 students and it becomes amazing that I ever manage to get anything done.
At any rate, this is part of my job and I’m getting better at it. I’m usually able to come in, flip a switch, push a button and get things back up and running. Some professors don’t like it when you solve a problem in thirty seconds (it tends to demonstrate that they were doing something wrong). But they’re usually just happy that you got things up and running. Many of them then instruct their classes to applaud for me. I usually resist the urge to curtsy and blow kisses and choose instead to stare at the floor, mumble red faced-ly and then run away.
Why is this? I’ve been thinking about it all day today.
I’m a complete and utter ham in every other aspect of my life. Even the weekly email that I send out to our department is full of stupid jokes and exclamation points. I’m the girl that begs the karaoke DJ to let her sing one more song. Hell, even this blog is a vehicle for my dumb jokes. And yet I want to fade into the background when I’m working in a classroom.
If you could take AV Ninja classes, I would be all over that shit.
I’m thinking that part of it is me respecting the classroom as a place of learning and my own desire to not interrupt that learning process. Part of it is probably an innate respect/fear of professors. Part of it is that there are a lot of things that I can’t do when students are in a room (like get up on a ladder and start messing with the projector). Part of it is just plain old terror that I’ll accidentally show off my ass-crack to the entire front row of students. And the rest? Who knows. But I should probably be more proud when I get things up and running, thus making it easier for someone to teach. Hey, I saved the day. Like Mighty Mouse. And that little mouse was awesome.
What I do know is this: The next time a professor makes their class applaud for me, I am so going to curtsy.
I’ll attempt to resist the urge to blow kisses.
