Teachable moment

It’s been a while since I last posted anything on here. 2 weeks, actually, since I wrote about my excruciating first run in months. Interestingly, I haven’t run again since… But I have done other things, lest you’d be concerned about me sitting on my ass all day. First off, I couldn’t since we have a baby at home and sitting is no longer a leisure option. Only a conscious choice that you put in your schedule after discussing the topic with your spouse.

In any event, one of the new things that happened since I last wrote about my thrilling life story was that I gave my very first class this week. And no, the picture above is not actually taken from said class: I didn’t think about taking one… I’d been in talks with a Parisian business school for a while about doing this (on stuff I know, like websites and Instagram), but things got somewhat shaken up by Covid, as did just about everything else. And so, after months of preparing for it, it finally happened Friday.

When I say ‘preparing for it’, I mean mentally rather than concretely: the slides were not quite ready until the day (night) before. That kind of has to do with the fact that I switched languages almost last minute: the class was being given to a group of Chinese advanced students and I was supposed to speak in French with a live interpreter (interesting experience, if you haven’t tried). Then, a couple of days before due date, I was asked by the school if I could do it in English instead. As it happens, I do speak English.

Friday morning, a little before 8am, when I logged in, I started chatting with the interpreter: her French happened to be stronger than her English, that’s why she’d been chosen — and apparently not told about doing the class in English… So I did what any sensible person would do: gave my class in French, based on slides in English, then translated into Chinese. So very 2021.

The next class is Wednesday. I should be working on my slides instead of writing this. Then again, it’s Sunday.