Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Humiliation....Jumbotron style

Whew, that last post very depressing and super lame.  Who says lame anymore you ask?  Well I do, for starters, and I'm sure there is some aging Valley Girl who won't give up her teenage vernacular who is right there with me...

Anyway.  Hmmmmm. What to write about.  Well behind door number one I've got a giant monster poop in the middle of the kitchen floor by Zac (I thought it was a stuffed animal behind him, I swear.)  Out the top of the diaper and onto the floor in a little pile...my friend CO was visiting...it was bad, you can ask her, I was afraid her child would inadvertently fall into it and never be recovered, which would be  a shame, I like baby CO a lot....

Or behind door number two:  the intense, public humiliation that I suffered in front of a room full of people, beamed to other universities?

Humiliation or Poop: both compelling subjects, I'm sure Shakespeare had the same dilemma when he was figuring out what to write...  Hmmmm "To sleep, perchance to dream.... or musings on poop"  I'm sure he was wrought with indecision...

So, humiliation it is....

Last week I attended a research grant writing workshop at the medical school at Dalhousie, the largest university in Nova Scotia ( for all of you stumbling upon this from Tasikstahn and other parts of the world....)

After a very painful, non-relevant morning, we came back from lunch to attend a workshop on writing Layperson summaries of our research projects, so that other scientists reading our work would give the go ahead to give us money to continue to be research geeks.

We are in a giant seminar room in the medical school and I am totally distracted by the technology in this room...there are three Jumbotron screens at the front, and we can see the seminar rooms of the other universty audience and they can see us too.  There is a button with a sensor at each seat so that if you push it , one of the 6 high definition cameras in the room will train itself on you so you can be seen on the large screen at the front, as well as the large screens at the front of the rooms of the participating universities.  You can see that this is not going to end well, can't you....

So the guy at the fronts asks the first question, "What should be in a summary?" I lean over to my manager Lynda, and whisper..."the purpose...".  Some dude on the left side of the room calls out, "The purpose..." and the prof says, "Yes, exactly...." he then addresses the room, "What else???"

Now,  no one is answering.... he's just standing there like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's day off, intoning, "Anyone......anyone....."  I immediately begin to feel sorry for the guy.  I have this intense rescuing instinct, and I tend to use it, even if others don't particulary need or want to be rescued.  I think I was a St. Bernard in a previous life.  Come to think of it...I could really use one of those little portable kegs of whisky....who wouldn't love to see that coming??

So anyway, after squirming a bit and waiting for someone else to call out an answer I say, "Well, you'd probably want to say something about your methodology......."  I expected the guy would be suitably grateful that I saved him from awkwardly standing at the front of the room while everyone else pointedly ignored his question.  I also felt ok about answering because he was enthusiastic about the previous answer given by some dude who turned out to be a Zebrafish researcher.  I'm sure such a nice guy would reward me with a verbal pat on the head and  a nice compliment on the timliness and brilliance of my answer, given just when he needed it the most. Ahh, another satisfied customer....

So is that what you think the guy did?? "Thankyou, small blonde angel, for your exquisitely correct answer, I can now move on with my day with my will to live left reasonably intact.....lets share a shot of whiskey later shall we?"

Nope, THAT would not be blog content....no no, friends...there has to be trauma, humiliation, screaming inside of one's head and a ceaseless manic stream of conscienceness  in order to qualify for space in this small section of the blogosphere....

He trains his critical, "oh, Blondie is going to pretend to be smart" look on me and says, "What exactly do you mean by that....can you follow up on that answer??"

What?  That is not gratitude...no mountain top shots of Glenlivet  for you buddy.

Now, a strange thing happened to me.  The enormity of this will be lost to those who do not know me in person, who have never been subject to my never ending stream of verbage, who have never heard me rant in a "I can't believe she hasn't taken a breath yet"...type of way.  Not only that, I'm THAT kid who raises her hand to always answer the question, I suffer from an intense case of "Ooooh, Pick-me-itis...."  I will make up stuff, dredging bits and pieces of fragmented factoids on any given subject just to have something to say on a topic....   BUT, in this case....

I had nothing.....I mean... I listened for the voices in my head... who are normally shouting over one another to  be heard, "ooh, say this....no, I've got something better.....oh, this will make you look the smartest of alllllllllll!!!"  and strangely, they were all quiet, minding their own business, reading newspapers and sipping lattes and laid back cafes somewhere..... maybe meditating or doing suduko, I don't know.

So I smile weakly, and mumble some offhand attempt at a comedic response, "Oh, that's a good question... I don't want to take up ALL of the time, heh, heh..."  and I attempt to wave him off in  what I thought of as an "offhand yet disarmingly charming" way.

He is having none of it..."No, could you follow up that answer please.  Oh, and hit your button."

WHAT?  Hit the button, but he didn't make Zebrafish boy hit the button, he just let him sail on by with his correct answer, no jumbotron necessary.

So I start to get flushed, and I slowly reach for the button whispering under by breath (whilst hyperventilating...)  Ohmygod, hewantsmetopushthebutton.......I've got NOTHING!  Ok, calm down...just relax... you'll think of something...

So I push the button and sit in dread as the camera slowly arcs toward me and suddenly, there I am..On the Jumbotron.  Oh and did I mention that it was drizzling outside and my mascara was running and I looked like a Romanian Refugee? (Not that I mean to minimize the plight of real refugees, with the starving and the losing of their homes and such, but you get the enormity of my personal angst here..)  Anyway,  I didn't quite realize how incredibly pathetic I looked until I saw myself in HD at the front of the room.  I mean High Definition???  Is this really necessary...celebrities cringe at the thought of HD after they've spent 4 hours in hair and makeup with a professional.  All I can say is t'wasn't pretty Cletis....

So back to frantically searching the recesses of my brain, begging the voices for help.  Evidently the union got to them and they were on a mandatory break cause you could hear crickets on the ole thought assembly line.  Finally I squeaked out... "Well, maybe you should say something about your participant pool and your research design??"

"Participant pool......research design....."  he intones...  ahhhhh.   He pauses for a moment as if lost in thought and just when I think he might move on, he begins to lambaste my answer in front of the whole auditorium as well as the auditorium at the University of New Brunswick where the lovely HD signal was beamed to. "Do you actually think anyone would continue to read your summary using words like that?? You've bored me to death in the first sentence"...

I was actually embarrrased, and the thing is I don't get embarrassed, as in a sense of hot humiliation and shame... The last time it happened was in 2006.  The funny thing is, when I told my manager that I was actually embarrased, she said, "Wow, that never happens, the last time I remember was in 2006".  That's how seldom it happens, when it does it's a memorable event.  And if you've read any of the other posts in this blog, you should know it takes a lot to embarrass me.  Not that I shouldn't be embarrassed....I'm just comfortable in my own dorktom, and I take great pleasure at marvelling at just how much of a twit I can be sometimes, often floating above myself, shaking my head and thinking.."Will you just look at yourself down there..."


The funny thing, it wasn't even the Jumbotron thing that got me.  I was past it, I didn't care anymore.  Lacking any decent sense of self-preservation,  I proceeded with 2 more futile attempts to redeem myself during the seminar. I spent the rest of the session trying for a right answer, slapping that damn button, not caring that I looked like a desperate, haggard, annoying,  overachieving game show contestant.... I just wanted that guy to tell me I was RIGHT about SOMETHING before the end of the day.

He didn't....

Gag me with a spoon.

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