One thing I’ll never understand, is why every time I have to be out of the office for but one day, I discover all the more calls and messages upon returning, along with their usually being one or two urgent ones.
Yes, today was another continuing eduction day for me which happened to be an eight hour stint. I’ve had today’s instructor in past years, and find her interesting enough to keep from falling asleep in class. One annoying thing she was doing today, was not giving breaks every hour, because they were over an hour and a half apart.
When I taught the 30 hour pre-licensing course a number of years ago, I made sure they’d get a ten minute break every 45 – 60 minutes. I considered that very important because there was a great deal of new material to go over which was very important for them to learn and most of all, have stored away in their long term memories.
Whenever having to get my required continuing education hours in, those many hours and days spent teaching those classes always come rushing back to me. One of the students in today’s class asked, “Do you think you’ll start teaching real estate classes again?” I smiled, shook my head, and said, “It’ll be a cold day before I freely beat myself up like I did back then.”
What probably drained me the most was having given my 101% every time I stepped into those classrooms. To this day, I remember how I handled the difficult ones, along with how to keep nearly everyone’s attention. I didn’t realize until I began instructing those classes, how easily I could “read” which ones were there to learn, and which ones were just along for the ride. The ones that annoyed me the most were those who intentionally slowed my lectures down by asking questions that were irrelevant to whatever topic we were discussing. Yes, there are always those who want to be heard, no matter how foolish whatever comes out of their mouths appear to be.
Today’s class contained several of those “You gotta hear ME” students. One in particular was making comments that were too flat to be funny, and too simplistic to be worthy of debate. I’m glad I was able to sit next to an agent I’ve know for a good number of years, just so to have a few good chats and laughs during our breaks.
While taking a fast stroll down a hall during a break just to get myself re-awakened, a young man who was likely a regular student walked past me saying, “You’re a sharp dresser.” Since we both were walking quickly in opposite directions, all I could say was, “Thanks for the compliment.” The creepiest of it all was not but 15 minutes earlier I was talking to several colleagues about how so many of our young seem to work all the more at dressing themselves down to the point where they likely don’t even feel good about themselves. With that said, I pose this question. “If you don’t feel good about yourself, then how must you feel about others?
This is for sure a good one-liner: Sometimes science advances faster than it should.
And my lingering footnote is: We must never be forced to understand something that our human minds have not yet evolved enough to fully understand–especially regarding any long-term ramifications on humanity. And this time, I really mean it.
