the art of preperation
Yesterday, I went to bed at around 7 PM, with a huge headache and body feeling weak all over.
Though i kept waking up from time to time, I only really got out of bed at 7 AM to get ready for school.
And no, this was not a result of some massive huge wonderful drunk party (so if you were fishing for some gossip, you won’t get any).
I think it was more of a result of not getting enough sleep for the past three nights due to various work things.
This week had two huge tasks, a proposal had to be sent in by Wednesday, and on Thursday I had a lecture on director as researcher to give at UCT. The truth is that I underestimated both these tasks.
The proposal came together (if i can use that word) over the last two nights, but it also really started on those same two nights. I had been dreading the work, I knew it had to be done, but I also went with the thought that it was never going to get accepted. I guess if you go in with a negative view like that, you are not going to get much done. I was struggling to articulate why this play needed to be done. In my head it all made sense, but on paper it was such a challenge to write down. With the help of Jon, it got polished and mailed, though I still think our chances for its acceptance are slim.
The following day, I was standing in front of 50 students trying to convince them that a director as a researcher is really like a tourist in a world he is trying to discover. Once again, it was all in my head, and I found that my mouth was struggling to articulate its ideas. I was losing their attention, people were yawning, they were talking amongst each other and I felt like I became a bit of a boring tour guide in a grand city such as Paris or New York. Thankfully I had music in the background to help me out and at least create a good atmosphere.
I felt quite inadequate about both these projects and it got me to thinking that I need a lot more preperation. Indeed that teaching and writing proposals are arts in themselves. With a proposal, you are supposed to attract the attention out of a thousand other applicants, and get those people in the panel really excited about the show. You need to seduce them from a distance, with your words, but also with other materials. You need put that extra effort in to stand out, to get them on your side. The same thing with teaching, if you put effort in it, you can make every lecture interesting and captivating. And I had potential with this one, I could have gotten the students more involved, got them to dig around the files I had handed out, got them talking, asking interesting questions…and so on…
I could have made both those things into something a lot more special, something less ordinary.
But maybe this is a good lesson to remind oneself of: never underestimate the amount of work you need to do. You cannot rest on some kind of laurel, thinking that because you have done it before, you should easily be able to do it again. You must always go back and question yourself, and be a bit over prepared, and make it an art piece…whether it is a proposal or a lesson.